Word: rubinstein
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...Rubinstein's feats of memory are legendary. In 1903 he caused a sensation in Warsaw by performing Paderewski's Sonata in E Flat Minor the day after it was published; he learned Cesar Franck's complex Symphonic Variations on the train en route to a concert hall in Madrid. He can commit a sonata to memory in one hour, and he can play as many as 250 lieder. His friends used to play a kind of "Stump Artur" game in which they would call out titles?excerpts from symphonies, operas, Cole Porter scores?to see if he could play them...
...abundance of that. It has to do rather with style, with the maturing of a heart and mind plunged into a lifelong love affair with music and, to a degree few men are blessed to know, with life itself. Fired by this infinite capacity for self-renewal, Rubinstein has simply never stopped improving. Where the artistry of most virtuosos begins to decline at about 60, he has conquered the heady impetuosity that sometimes flawed the playing of his early years. He thrives by infusing a dash of improvisation, "a drop of fresh blood," into each performance. He will even experiment...
...Indeed, Rubinstein is not content merely to rework his repertory. He is constantly developing it. It is not easy, for his "musical valise," as he calls it, is already brimming with the widest repertory of any living pianist. As far back as 1919, he played a series of 27 recitals in Mexico City with only an occasional repetition. Since then his catalogue has expanded in all directions, with the exception of the avantgarde, "whom I leave to the youngsters." He has long been the world's reigning Chopinist, he excels in French impressionistic and modern Spanish music...
Back to Mozart. As a stripling, Rubinstein often lived at the mercy of impresarios who wanted him to perform only the crowd pleasers?Liszt, Tchaikovsky, Rachmaninoff. "They never listened to me," he growls, "just to the box office." Now, like an aging Romeo, he has "come back to Mozart on my knees." That alone is quite an achievement. "You remember what Schnabel said about Mozart sonatas?" recalls Rubinstein. " 'Too easy for children, too difficult for artists.' " So it is: Mozart demands a fidelity to rhythm that few performers can ever master. It is characteristic of Rubinstein's magic that even...
...know that in the bottom right-hand corner of this page is a little coffee stain, and on that page I have written molto vivace." He has, in fact, a kind of built-in Hit Parade network that spins music on request through his inner ear. "At breakfast," says Rubinstein, "I might pass a Brahms symphony in my head. Then I am called to the phone, and half an hour later I find it's been going on all the time and I'm in the third movement...