Word: rubinstein
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...Rubinstein despises all anniversaries, and he is especially uncomfortable as a 75-year-old; he has noticed, he says, that the world resents a man who keeps living past jubilees. Still, it will soon be 70 years since he made his debut as a child prodigy in Warsaw; he can look back 58 years and 5,000 concerts to the day of his American debut. In those early days, his simple love of playing and his overwhelming love of life drove him from tedious practice, and for many years too many notes landed on the floor under the piano...
...Hummingbird's Flight. Rubinstein's marriage in 1932 gave him a new sense of dedication. "I went to work," he says. "I learned to work on the piano for the piano's sake." When he returned to the U.S. for what he calls his "third debut" in 1937, he came as a giant who had transformed his joie de vivre into the strongest alloy of his music...
...great romantic literature of the piano he brought all the devouring delight that in youth he had lavished on la vie Parisienne. The years since have only whetted his appetite. "The performer's life is a gift from heaven," says Rubinstein. "Making music is pure joy, like making love...
...friends. And, as always, the banquet was just about to start. Striding onstage to his Steinway, he turned to his devoted audience at Manhattan's Philharmonic Hall with the suave little bow that he has made on more stages than any other pianist in history. Then Artur Rubinstein addressed himself to the feast: both of the Brahms concertos, either one of which is more than a good night's labor. But his strength and sureness only grew as he played on. Seeing him there, hearing the majestic ring of his music, it was difficult to believe that Rubinstein...
Having long since reached this happy entente with himself, Rubinstein travels and tastes the world like a hummingbird, charming friends in eight languages, pausing at his Manhattan and Paris houses barely long enough to savor his paintings and first editions. "That civilized man," as his friend Thomas Mann once called him, plays at least 100 concerts every year. Before the 1964 summer music festivals begin, he will have performed in Italy, London, Paris, Switzerland, Israel, Australia, New Zealand, Bangkok, Manila and Hawaii...