The fame of Arthur Rubinstein (1887-1983), one of the main pianists of the Twentieth century, is essentially connected to his performance of Chopin and Brahms, even if his repertory ranged from Mozart to Prokofiev. As reported in the preface, written by Rubinstein himself, to Casimir Wierzynski’s The Life and Death of Chopin, “the early years in Poland were essential in the formation of Chopin’s personality, and recur in his works. The Polish spirit stands as his main fount of inspiration, the essence of his whole being till his last days. (…) It is astonishing to see how audience is captured by Chopin’s music. (…) The most nationalistic composer turns out to be also the most cosmopolitan!”. Chopin’s Polonaises - among his more nationalistic works - were a consistant part of his repertory. Rubinstein recorded them three times, the first in London in the Thirties, the second in the Fifties and the last in the middle Sixties. “His scrupulous precision and the poorness of means were inseparable from the warmth of his expressiveness. On the one side, the heroism, his firm refusal to come to compromises, on the other side, his delicacy and sensibility: the richness of his world spans between these extremes”. This is what Rubinstein wrote about Chopin, and this are the aspects we learnt to appreciate in his masterly executions.
Rubinstein has recorded Schumann’s Fantasiestück for four times; a sign of the peculiar care the Polish pianist had for this work, completed by Schumann in 1837, and showing the composer genius and the creative fantasy. From Schumann to Brahms: an obvious connection, from the historical point of view, but even more strict if we consider Rubinstein pianism, so close to these two composers. “Brahms’ music has always been very familiar to me, even more than the music of my countryman Chopin. In my very first years, I had the honour of being intimate with the great violinist Joseph Joachim, the legendary performer, Brahms’ counsellor and friend. Through him I immersed myself in Brahms’ music since my beginning. We should remember that Brahms was still alive when I was ten years old; in this perspective, he was a contemporary to me, not an “old teacher”. Such is my approach to his music; as far as I can, I try to convey the essence of that Brahms I learnt to love since the first day”. These are Rubinstein’s words about his relation with Brahms’ music, in an interview he gave in his old age: words well expressing his peculiar and exclusive relation with the composer. Since when he studied by the Hochschule in Berlin, a pupil of Heinrich Barth, Rubinstein was appointed as piano-accompanist in Joachim’s violin class, where he became familiar with Brahms’ chamber music and for piano, as well as the three Sonatas. The Sonata for Piano n. 3 - an exceptional witness of Brahms’ heroic attitude, and of his powerful pianism, expecially in his twenties - was recorded twice by Rubinstein. In this first edition, published in 1949, he plays an extraordinary performance, masterly combining virtuosity and essentiality of phrasing, thanks to a piano technique at the height of its expressive possibilities.
|
