Word: rubinstein
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...Nijmegen recital drew a flurry of editorials in West German papers, and the program handed out in the town's Concertgebouw contained letters from German Baritone Die trich Fischer-Dieskau and Berlin Phil harmonic Manager Wolfgang Stresemann: all said that no civilized German could fail to understand Rubinstein's feelings...
Psychological Crust. Rubinstein has long fortified his total embargo of Germany and Germans with gallows humor ("There are 90 million Jews in the world today. Why? Because there are 30 million Germans, and each reports he personally saved three Jews during the war"). He still harbors the dark suspicion that the presence of one vestigial Nazi dreaming in the dark of a concert hall while listening to a Rubinstein Appassionata would freeze his fingers into furious claws. But the jokes are worn with time, and the thriving German market for Rubinstein recordings has diluted his horror of German ears. Last...
...Rubinstein has long been an intransigent leader of such musicians as Heifetz and Stern, who also refuse to play in Germany and who have joined Rubinstein in protests against German musicians appearing in the U.S. For them, drawing the line at Nijmegen may have seemed a trifle shaky, but since theirs is a conspiracy of conscience only, no one objected to Rubinstein's plan. "There is a psychological crust that covers memories, and most people are afraid to break it after only 18 years," says Violinist Isaac Stern. "I could not and would not play my music in Germany...
Although the burghers of Nijmegen resented the all-German audience (most of the tickets were sold in Germany and only 60 Nijmegeners got in, on tickets made available at the last moment), the recital was a tremendous success with the visitors. The critics agreed that Rubinstein's playing was almost metaphysical. "The sad thing for us," mused the Frankfurter Allgemeine, "is that German musical culture of the time of Beethoven, Brahms, Schumann and Liszt, which we have every reason to mourn for, is so immediately present in hardly any artist of the world but Artur Rubinstein...
There was even some speculation that now, at 74, Rubinstein may be growing a bit nostalgic for the old Germany that treated him so well during seven happy years as a Wunderkind. Perhaps he had played the recital to test the wind for his return to die Heimat...