Sergei Rubinstein

“ We spoke of old days, and I asked him how he now got on in Petersburg. He replied that he was so overwhelmed with all kinds of attentions that he was perpetually embarrassed by them, and had but one trouble, which was that he never saw anything of Rubinstein, whom he had loved and respected from his student days. ‘Do what I will,’ he said, ‘I can get no hold on him; he escapes me like an eel.’ I laughed and said: ‘Do not take the great man’s ways too much to heart; he has his weaknesses like other mortals. ”

“ Rubinstein had been the first to give the novice in his art an example of the untiring devotion and disinterested spirit which animates the life of the true artist. In this sense Tchaikovsky was far more the pupil of Rubinstein than in questions of orchestration and composition. With his innate gifts and thirst for knowledge, any other teacher could have given him the same instruction. ”

“ At the last concert Rubinstein played pieces by Henselt, Thalberg, Liszt, and others. There was very little artistic choice, but the performance was indeed astonishing.”
To N. F. von Meck.
“Maidanovo, February 14th (26th) , 1886.
“ ... The festival which the town of Moscow held in Rubinstein’s honour was a great success. He was{504} visibly touched by the energy and warmth with which the Muscovites expressed their affection for him. Indeed, everyone must recognise that Rubinstein is worthy of all such honour. He is not only a gifted artist, but also a most honourable and generous man.” ”

“ Rubinstein's playing is not only remarkable for the absolute perfection of technique, in which he is the only rival Liszt ever had, but there is the fire and soul which only a true and genial composer can possess. He can play a simple piece of Haydn or Mozart so as to positively bring tears into the eyes of his hearers, but on the other hand, he will sometimes fall a prey to a strange excitement which causes him to play in the wildest fashion. ”

“ I have heard both Rubinstein and Tausig in concert since I last wrote. They are both wonderful, but in quite a different way. Rubinstein has the greatest power and abandon in playing that you can imagine, and is extremely exciting. I never saw a man to whom it seemed so easy to play. It is as if he were just sporting with the piano, and could do what he pleased with it. Tausig, on the contrary, is extremely restrained, and has not quite enthusiasm enough, but he is absolutely perfect, and plays with the greatest expression. ”

“ He died a man disappointed in his ideals and ambitions. 'All I care about after my death is that men shall remember me by this conservatory; let them say, this was Anton Rubinstein's work,' he said, pointing to the Imperial Conservatory in St. Petersburg, [8] of which he had been not only the founder but the director for many years.
During all his influential life Rubinstein was bitterly opposed to the Russian nationalistic school of music, at the head of which stood Balakireff, Moussorgsky, and Rimsky-Korsakoff. He referred to them as to dabblers and eccentric amateurs. ”

“ But the Dumka and the Islamey of Balakireff stand far above all the other pianoforte music written by the five, not only from the point of view of style, but as an expression of national spirit.
Anton Rubinstein (1830-1894) desired to be known as a composer rather than as a virtuoso, but his once often-heard compositions, works for the pianoforte, overtures, symphonies, and operas, are rapidly losing their hold on the public, and it seems likely that they will not be remembered even so long as his playing will. ”

“ This well-known piece, regardless of the composer's intentions, he begins ppp', proceeding crescendo, with perfect gradation, up to the Trio, after which he recommences ff and with an equally long and subtle diminuendo ends as softly as he began. As an effect—the idea of a band passing—this is stale and unworthy of an artist, but as a tour de force it can only be justly appreciated by those who have heard it done and then sought to imitate it. It is an impossible feat.
The compositions of Rubinstein are not yet sufficiently mellowed by time for us to judge them fairly. ”

“ I do not know how to meet fame half-way on my own initiative, and prefer to wait until it comes to me unsought. I have long since resigned myself to the belief that I shall not live to see the general recognition of my talents.
“You speak of Anton Rubinstein. How can I compare myself to him? He is at present the greatest pianist in the world. He combines the personalities of a remarkable virtuoso and a gifted composer, so that the latter is borne as it were upon the shoulders of the former. In my lifetime I shall never attain to a tenth part of what he has accomplished. ”

“ But whatever may be the fate of Rubinstein's instrumental music, he was a composer of excellent songs, which will be sung as long as man lives. They are the very crown of his creations. From among his numerous ballads and songs 'The Asra,' 'The Dream,' 'Night,' etc., are especially enchanting. In them he stands unmatched by any composer of his time. The number of his works surpasses one hundred; there are ten string quartets, three quintets, five concertos, three sonatas for violin and piano, two for 'cello and piano, two for violin and orchestra. ”

“ At the piano, engaged in marking a sheet of manuscript music, was a short, heavy-set person, with a leonine mane and deep, brilliant eyes: a man known all over Europe, and to be known throughout America: one Anton Rubinstein, pianist, a maker of music. At his elbow, but talking to a frail-looking woman, was his brother, Nicholas, destined always to be overshadowed by Anton, but to whom the cause of Russian music was to owe far more, in the end, than to the more showy virtuoso. ”

“ Rubinstein was a creative virtuoso, Tschaikowsky was a creative genius. They took the same general direction in form and themes, but otherwise a wide abyss separated these two unique spirits of Russian music. Tschaikowsky had Rubinstein's passion and technical skill, the same lyric style, and, like him, adhered to West European form, but in his essentials he remains a Russian of the most classic tendencies; his language is that of an emotional Slav. His music glows with the peculiar fire that burned in his soul; rapture and agony, gloom and gayety seem in a perpetual struggle for expression. ”

“ In this brief sketch only the greatest names can be considered,--such names as Rubinstein, Tschaikowsky, Dvorák, Grieg.
Rubinstein was not only one of the greatest pianists, but one of the most spontaneous and fertile melodists of all times. His frequently careless workmanship and his foolish, savage hostility to the dominant Wagner movement prevented him from enjoying the fruits of his rare genius. He felt that, had it not been for the all-absorbing Wagner, he himself might have been as popular as Mendelssohn. ”

“ At the head of these musical friends stands Nicholas Rubinstein, of whom it is no exaggeration to say that he was the greatest influence throughout Tchaikovsky’s after career. No one, artist or friend, did so much for the advancement of his fame, gave him greater support and appreciation, or helped him more to conquer his first nervousness and timidity, than the Director of the Moscow Conservatoire. Nicholas Rubinstein is intimately associated with every event in Tchaikovsky’s private and public life. ”

“ To inoculate the world with a passion for a special form of dance music is not such an easy thing as it seems at first sight. National customs and inclinations stand in the way. As Rubinstein has remarked, "A melody which moves a Finn to tears will leave a Spaniard cold, a dance rhythm which makes a Hungarian skip will not disturb an Italian in his rest, etc." To have made all the young people in the world dance to the rhythm of the Austrian waltz is, therefore, a feat which required the magic power of genius for its performance. ”

“ She plays with the confidence born of long unpunished misdoing. That Rubinstein must indeed be sorry, and unless their elysium is like the library of the Linnæan Society, and fitted with double windows, all the great departed musicians must be sorry too, that he ever wrote a Melody in F. Daily from the altars of a thousand, of ten thousand, school pianos that melody cries to heaven. ”

“ To be quite plain, they seem to lack artistic conscience. Rubinstein, in particular, wrote a great quantity of songs, chiefly to German and Russian texts, which no sincere artist should have dared to sign. They were addressed to the drawing rooms and the tinsel concert halls of the time. Perhaps they were actually the pot-boilers with which he sought to eke out his income. Most of them should be passed over in charitable silence. Tschaikowsky shows a somewhat higher level of artistic effort, but too often he writes much noise and little music. ”

“ During Rubinstein’s stay in Moscow he was bothered by a crowd of artists “in embryo,” who all wanted to sing for “opera” without having the remotest idea how to sing, coming to ask him if he would try their voices and tell them if they had talent enough to follow the artistic career. A friend of ours happened to come on a visit to Rubinstein just at the [147] moment when a fat, neckless lady of about fifty summers was making her rehearsal. She sang like an old cat ”

“ And then the three are great, not alone because of their nation; they are great personalities who would make tremble the ground of any other land.
Rubinstein alone seems to have slipped between the stools of race and religion. Born a Jew, raised a Christian, and of Polish origin, he played the piano like a god, and his compositions are never quite German, never quite Russian. He has been called the greatest pianist among the composers and the greatest composer among the pianists, yet has hardly received his just due.
Tschaïkowsky’s life is the record of a simple, severe workingman of art. ”

“ He has a gigantic spirit in him, and is extremely poetic and original, but for an entire concert he is too much. Give me Rubinstein for a few pieces, but Tausig for a whole evening. Rubinstein doesn't care how many notes he misses, provided he can bring out his conception and make it vivid enough. Tausig strikes every note with rigid exactness, and perhaps his very perfection makes him at times a little cold. Rubinstein played Schubert's Erl-König, arranged by Liszt, gloriously. Where the child is so frightened, his hands flew all over the piano, and absolutely made it shriek with terror. ”

“ Rubinstein was almost fanatically attached to the standards of the Western classical composers. He distrusted innovations, and not only avoided them, but actually opposed them. He wrote an interesting little booklet, which he called "Finita la Musica." ”

“ Critics differ very much as to Rubinstein's merits as a composer, but as to the quality of his work for the stage there can hardly be two opinions. His music is essentially undramatic. None of his works, at any rate outside Russia, has achieved more than a passing success. 'The Demon,' a strange story of the love of a demon for a Russian princess, has some fine music in it, but the story is almost totally devoid of incident, and the opera as a whole is intolerably wearisome. ”

“ When I joined the Conservatoire I was—as I have already told you—an enthusiastic worshipper of Rubinstein. But when I knew him better, when I became his pupil and we entered into daily relations with each other, my enthusiasm for his personality became even greater. In him I adored not only a great pianist and composer, but a man of rare nobility, frank, loyal, generous, incapable of petty and vulgar sentiments, clear and right-minded, of infinite goodness—in fact, a man who towered far above the common herd. As a teacher, he was of incomparable value. ”

“ He had also grown to regard him as one of the chief props of his artistic life. Nicholas Rubinstein was always the first, and best, interpreter of his works for pianoforte and orchestra. Whenever Tchaikovsky wrote a symphonic work, he already heard it in imagination as it would sound in the concert-room in Moscow, and knew beforehand that under Rubinstein’s direction he would experience no disappointment. The great artist had the gift of discovering in Tchaikovsky’s works beauties of which the composer himself was hardly conscious. ”

“ The attempt to convince the Nihilists is useless. They must be exterminated; there is no other remedy against this evil.”
At the end of January Tchaikovsky sent the Trio to Moscow with a request that it might be tried by Taneiev,{419} Grjimali, and Fitzenhagen. His letter to Jurgenson concludes as follows:—
“The Trio is dedicated to Nicholas G. Rubinstein. It has a somewhat plaintive and funereal colouring. As it is dedicated to Rubinstein’s memory it must appear in an édition de luxe. I beg Taneiev to keep fairly accurately to my metronome indications. ”

“ Nor can I linger to pay more than a passing tribute to his generous qualities as a man. His position as a dramatic composer and his influence on the development of Russian opera are all I am expected to indicate here. This need not occupy many pages, since his influence is in inverse ratio to the voluminous outpourings of his pen. Rubinstein’s ideal oscillates midway between national and{168} cosmopolitan tendencies. The less people have penetrated into the essential qualities of Russian music, the more they are disposed to regard him as typically Russian ”

“ When the{594} Duke of Mecklenburg-Strelitz requested him to take part in organising the celebration of Rubinstein’s jubilee, he expressed himself willing to put himself at the disposal of the committee. It was decided that he should conduct the jubilee concerts and compose a chorus a capella to words by Polonsky. The chorus was to be sung at the festival given in the hall of the Nobles’ Club, November 18th (30th) , 1889. In addition he undertook to contribute something to the album which Rubinstein’s former pupils at the Petersburg Conservatoire were going to present him on the same occasion. ”