Word: rubinstein
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...almost 50 years ago to the month that Artur Rubinstein first played in Carnegie Hall (a mere coincidence, he insists-"I hate anniversaries"). In that half century he has grown from a prodigy to a musical playboy to a great artist with the broadest popular following of any front-rank musician in the world. The compact dignity of his entrances, his ramrod back and frizzled grey crown, his highhanded hammering of the keyboard are known and loved wherever there are pianos...
Student of High Life. Rubinstein was born in Lodz, Poland, the youngest of seven children of a small manufacturer. By the time he was three, he was a "terrible little fiend" about music, screaming at his sisters when they struck a sour chord and banging the piano lid on their fingers to make them stop. Impressed with his son's possibilities, Papa Rubinstein bought him a child-sized violin. Artur promptly smashed it. Papa bought another, and Artur smashed that too. Papa gave up, let him concentrate on the then less fashionable piano...
...Rubinstein made his official debut in Berlin at the age of eleven, playing Mozart's A-Major Concerto (K. 488). Critics cheered, but today he rarely plays Mozart. "He is the greatest of them all-so clear, so pure. Today I am too clever, too knowing, no longer simple...
...French count, "had a little carriage and was thin as a stick because I never got to bed until morning." One evening Composer Paul (The Sorcerer's Apprentice) Dukas found him breakfasting in a cafe and insisted that he come at once to his studio. There he presented Rubinstein with a handful of pornographic pictures. "Why?" asked Artur. "Because that's the only thing you seem to be interested in these days," said Dukas. That slap in the face and the stern lecture that followed sent Rubinstein to the country and a milk diet. But after a short...
...Germany again, and never has. Asked what countries he had not visited in the last 40 years, he once named Tibet, because it is too high, and Germany, because it is too low. In 1938 he returned a decoration awarded him by Mussolini with a telegram signed "Artur Rubinstein, Jewish pianist...