Word: rubinstein
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...hobnobbed with dukes and princesses, sat up all night drinking champagne with Cocteau and Picasso ("I knew him before he was Picasso and I was Rubinstein"). He cultivated a taste for fine wines, rich food, rare books, imported cigars, expressionistic paintings. He was the darling of Europe, hopscotching from the Riviera to Vienna to London, charming friends in eight languages...
...develop my talent." Then in 1926 he met Aniela ("Nela"), the handsome, honey-blonde daughter of Polish Conductor Emil Mlynarski. She was 17, he was 39. When he finally got around to proposing to her beneath the Chopin monument in Warsaw, Nela was doubtful. It seems that Rubinstein's lady of the moment, sensing a rival, had followed him and was threatening to make a scene. He got rid of her, made up to Nela, and after a persistent courtship married her in London in 1932. A year later they had their first child, Eva.* That started Rubinstein thinking about...
...three years that followed, the new Rubinstein poured wondrous cascades of music into all the concert halls of Europe. Sol Hurok brought him to America in 1937, and at 50, Rubinstein became a new idol. Everywhere, audiences clamored fqr him, and the critics threw superlatives at his fingers. During World War II, he moved his family to Hollywood, bought a rambling 15-room mansion next door to Ingrid Bergman and soon became movieland's great bon vivant. He chummed around with the Basil Rathbones and the Ronald Colmans, gave lavish garden parties, darted in and out of the gossip columns...
Tireless Rounds. There was chamber music with some of the "local talent" like Heifetz and Piatigorsky. Once, the story goes, Albert Einstein began to play a violin and piano sonata with Rubinstein. Einstein missed a cue in one passage and came in four beats late. They started again, and again Einstein flubbed. They began once more, and the great scientist again missed the cue. Finally, the exasperated Rubinstein cried, "For God's sake, Professor, can't you even count up to four...
...while, he continued his tireless round of concertizing. To this day, Rubinstein boasts proudly that he has never canceled a performance. Touring Israel in 1952 he smashed his right hand in a bureau drawer, incapacitating his fourth finger. He played the concert anyway, sticking to his difficult program (which included a piano version of Stravinsky's Petrushka), refingering the pieces as he went along. Everywhere he went, he sold out the house, eventually commanded $6,000 a performance...