For EIGHT DOLLARS remitted directly to the Publishers, the LIVING AGE will be punctually forwarded for a year, free of postage. Remittances should be made by bank draft or check, or by post-office money-order, if possible. If neither of these can be procured, the money should be sent in a registered letter. All postmasters are obliged to register letters when requested to do so. Drafts, checks, and money-orders should be made payable to the order of LITTELL & Co. Single copies of the LIVING AGE, 18 cents. From The Contemporary Review. RUBINSTEIN. There have been cases where the award has been delayed; but let three decades go by, the public is never wrong; and its award is absolutely final. Many of us can remember the astonishing sensation produced by Rubinstein in 1869. He had been in England three times before, but all of a sudden the public seemed to awake to his supreme merit. The high-priced tickets, £1 1s. and 15s. if I remember rightly, were bought up and resold. There was no getting into the hall. I happened to secure a seat not far from the piano, on the platform. When the pianist entered, the people I NEVER knew Rubinstein as well as I knew Liszt. He passed before me like a meteor in '58, 77, and '81. There was something Titanic and in- Amongst composers, we at ouce describable about the man. As a mere place in the first class Handel, Mopianist, Bülow was more accurate, zart, Beethoven, Wagner MendelsLiszt more romantic. Sophie Menter sohn o'ertopping the seconds, a little could play quite as fast and nearly as apart, not easy to class—and amongst loud. The sensibility of Chopin, the the phenomenal virtuosities of the elegance of Mendelssohn, and the ear- nineteenth century, Paganini, Liszt, nest and affectionate virtuosity of Rubinstein (apologies to Sarasate and Madame Schumann, the incomparable Paderewski, who can well afford to arpeggio playing of Thalberg, the wait for a fiual award till at least the bewilderingly high level of present year 1900). pianoforte playing, all seem somehow to leave Rubinstein apart upon a mountain. It was graceful of Liszt to surrender openly the sceptre of virtuosity to Rubinstein, but it was needless, for from the time that the greatest pianist of the nineteenth century ceased to play in public-just about forty years ago the sentiment of the whole musical world installed Rubinstein in his seat. The two men were very different the elder brilliant, talkative, great loving all men and all women and "rose at" him. The head was maschildren the other, far less social, sive and Beethovenesque. He looked expansive, polished, eloquent, or uni- pale and resolute, and cold to the apversally well-informed. In virtuosity plause, but like a man who meant to do pure and simple, it is possible that and dare greatly. His small eyes, Liszt, in his best days, excelled Rubin- never strong, had a half-closed, mystic, stein; but now John Ella is dead, there abstract look; his hair was thick and is probably no one alive in England tumbled; his gait far from graceful; whose opinion would be final on such a but the instant he sat down to the delicate question. But both giants piano a change seemed to come over were alike in the possession of certain him. His absorption was irresistible personal qualities, felt, like those of and contagious. He retained the old Jenny Lind and Paganini, throughout habit-caught from Liszt of tossing whole continents, but absolutely defy- his head back occasionally and passing ing analysis. Why, when Rubinstein a vagrant hand through his bushy, leoor Liszt appeared, all other pianists nine mane. He often raised high his had to take a back seat. It is quite hands, and swooped down on the piano impossible to say it may be too soon like an eagle upon its prey-another to speak of Paderewski finally, he is mannerism also caught from the too recent a product — but in an age of great abbate by all his disciples. But prodigious technique with Rubin- from the moment he began, the attenstein's hand scarce cold in the sepul- tion was enthralled, and for two hours chre-Paderewski, too, seems to have and a half the excitement continued the power of distancing rivals without trance-like, or at fever pitch, until the an effort. And what is it? That great gulf fixed between the absolutely first rank and the crop of splendid seconds. pent-up enthusiasm at the close culminated, one day when I was there, in a four-fold recall. The programme was divided into three parts, the older mas- | subtle and legitimate efforts. Rubinters being played with exquisite tender-stein would seem at times to play down ness and restraint. It was when he to them in scorn and mock them, or arrived at the Chopin section that he stalk through his part in a rage. The began to produce some of those pro- critics reproved him, and he left the digious and tornado-like effects, to country in a huff; but it was temper which that music lends itself. and want of patience with a public The Chopin Funeral March was who, though not musical, paid well, conceived with an elevation which took and offered him every kind of homage. the room by surprise. Often as I had He should have been contented with heard it, I felt I had never properly the cultivated portion of it who had heard it till then. I have never heard, really created the taste for him, but nor dream of hearing it so again. It Rubinstein was extremely irritable. I was eloquent emotion, almost amount- have known him get up from the table ing to imagery. The platform became in the middle of dinner and leave the a vision. The sad procession came company for no reason except that he winding on, and seemed to move off was bored. and lapse into sorrowful silence at the close of the ceremony. The use of ppp for the closing section of the march gave the somewhat abrupt ending just its right impressiveness and finish. The contrast of the presto which followed, rather faster than "greased lightning," as the Americans would say, was perfectly electric in its effect on the still dreaming audience. Rubinstein was undoubtedly inaccurate at times; people who held scores through those long programmes could easily find that out. He not only em broidered even Beethoven, but he would invent Bach. What he invented was probably quite as good as what he happened to forget, and always extremely interesting; still it was not note for note, and that is what the dullards gloated over. Words give but a faint idea of such moments. One may dwell on the Bülow was more accurate, but even lovely legato playing of Chopin's Bülow forgot or manufactured a bar or Etudes, the refinement of touch, which two occasionally. But these, if spots, at times seemed to caress the single were spots in the sun, and certainly all notes, until the prolonged vibration | Rubinstein did or left undone serves kept up under the fingers began to sing but to accentuate his individuality and on, as it were, of its own accord the display his genius in new and startling valse caprice dashed through with the lights. wild, relentless vigor of a thunderbolt - the crucial moments when the mighty executant seemed to hover for a moment between a fiasco which became a splendid triumph. "Words words! words!" as says Hamlet, but let them stand for impressious unique, imperial, indelible. Liszt had the same happy faculty of gilding his errors and adorning his faults. I remember Mr. Moscheles telling me how on one occasion Liszt came down on a wrong note in the treble, when, with admirable sang froid, he lingered on it for a moment as though he had done it on purpose, That Rubinstein played at times and then with a light arpeggio the incorrectly, wildly, even insolently, is whole length down the key-board and quite true, and the critics who enraged up again he reached the right note in him so were quite right to say so. the treble as he came up, and transWhat happened was this: Rubinstein formed a blemish into a sudden beauty. soon perceived — what, alas! all good Rubinstein was a prodigious emovirtuosi are not slow to discover that tional accumulator, and his power of the English (or a good leaven of them soul-concentration was no doubt largely in every audience) are not a musical the secret of the effect he produced. people." They can be taken with a You can only get out of a performclaptrap effect whilst deaf to more ance what you put into it. You 66 may walk through your part, or you | haps I may be allowed to record with may immolate yourself; the public re- some pride and all humility, that I was flects you exactly. Rubinstein immo- similarly honored by Richard Wagner, lated himself when he was in carnest. who, after reading an article of mine I have never heard him play better about himself, published in the Contemthan to a dozen people in John Ella's porary Review, met me in the antelittle drawing-room, 9 Victoria Square. room of Dannreuther's house in Orme Ella, whose judgment in music, and Square one night (when he had been especially in virtuosity, was nearly in- declaiming his "Parsifal" out loud to fallible; all his verdicts upon music George Eliot, Ruskin, and others), and and musicians having been generally embraced me à la Rubinstein on both accepted - John Ella, the founder of cheeks. the Musical Union, discerned Rubinstein from the first, and when the obscure Russian Pole became famous, to his honor be it said, he never forgot his early obligations to Ella. On one occasion he came all the way from St. Petersburg to play for him at the Musical Union refused his honorarium - declined to play anywhere else, and returned immediately. Ella used to tell the story with pardonable pride. Rubinstein loved John Ella, and he showed it with the effusiveness of a child. At Ella's Rubinstein always seemed at home. What artist could fail to be so? Had not Mendelssohn, Gounod, Lablache, Madame Schumann, Moscheles, and almost every other musical celebrity, at one time or another, met each other there ? It was one Sunday night that I was especially impressed with the intense power of concentration which Rubinstein put into what some would have called his least ambitious efforts. I sat close to him and watched him play a quiet nocturne of Chopin's. He sat almost quite motionless; presently the beads of sweat stood upon his forehead, and before he had done actually poured down his face and dropped on I remember that Ella had a pretty little niece of seventeen staying with him on one occasion, when suddenly a great, uncouth, unkempt presence burst into the room, fell upon Ella's the keyboard. Yet there was nothing neck, and, with clasped arms, kissed him twice, Franco more, on both cheeks. The little niece fled in dismay, but when he was gone she asked, "Who was that dreadful, wild-looking man, uncle, who rushed in and kissed you and hugged you so ?” 66 Ella followed him, mechanically difficult in what he Why, my dear child, that was the great Rubinstein !" "Oh, uncle!" said the girl in a burst of enthusiasm. "How I wish he'd kissed me!" But kissing, it seems, goes by favor. Liszt On one other occasion I heard Rubinkissed Rubinstein when he first heard stein in private, and to great advantage. the boy play in Paris. Mendelssohn I think it was in 1858. After a Crystal kissed the boy Joachim after hearing Palace concert, at which he had played, him play Bach's "Ciaconna." Liszt I dined with him at George, now Sir once told me in tones full of awe that George, Grove's house at Sydenham. when Beethoven had been induced, Grove was then secretary to the Cryswith some difficulty, to hear him play tal Palace Company. Rubinstein was, at a concert as a juvenile prodigy, the to say the least, odd at dinner, and I great man kissed him "oui"-and I think he got up more than once, and can hear the sententious rotundity of seemed to have little appetite; but Liszt's voice now- "C'est vrai, j'ai later on we all went into the drawingreçu le baiser de Beethoven!" Per- room, which opened on to the lawn. |