The life and work of Anton Rubinstein

Early life

Anton Rubinstein (1829–1894) was a Russian pianist, composer, conductor, educator and founder of the famous St. Petersburg Conservatory. As a pianist, he is among the great virtuosos of the nineteenth century. He became famous for some impressive recitals. He made these appearances on tours throughout Russia, Eastern Europe and the United States. Although he is best known as a pianist and educator, he was also prolific as a composer for a long period of his life. Among others, he composed many operas, five piano concertos, six symphonies and a large number of chamber music works (Wikipedia Contributors).

Rubinstein was a central figure in Russian music. The founder of the St. Petersburg Conservatory and Tchaikovsky's composition teacher, he was an early supporter of academic training in the country (Baranello). His personality was extremely charismatic but also "difficult". He was distinguished by great physical endurance, sensitivity and genuine humor. At one point he said: "Russians call me German, Germans call me Russian, Jews call me Christian and Christians call me Jewish. Pianists consider me a composer and composers consider me a pianist. The classicists call me a futurist and the futurists consider me a reactionary. My conclusion is that I am neither a fish nor a bird, just a sad person." (Wikipedia Contributors). He was born on November 16, 1829 and died on November 3, 1894. His parents were Jewish. Later, his family converted to Russian Orthodoxy and he later became an atheist. His mother was a very good musician and started giving him piano lessons from the age of five until he started music lessons with Professor Vilwan. At the age of nine he made his first public appearance at a charity concert (Wikipedia Contributors).

In 1840, Anton played at the Éralard Hall in Paris. Chopin and Liszt were in the audience. The former invited the eleven-year-old to his studio to perform, and Liszt advised his teacher to take him to Germany to study composition. But that Anton toured extensively in Europe and Western Russia (Wikipedia Contributors).

In the spring of 1844, he traveled with his family to Berlin. There he met Mendelssohn and Giacomo Meyerbeer who supported the composer. In the summer of 1846, Anton's father fell seriously ill, so he stayed in Berlin, while the rest At the age of 17, he began to give lessons to make a living. After an unsuccessful year in Vienna and a concert tour in Hungary, he returned to Berlin and continued to give lessons (Wikipedia Contributors).

The turmoil from the Revolutions of 1848 forced Rubinstein to return home. For the next five years in St. Petersburg, he taught and gave concerts, often at the imperial court. Grand Duchess Elena Pavlovna, sister of Tsar Nicholas I, became his most devoted patron. By 1852, he had become a leading figure in the musical life of St. Petersburg, as a soloist and collaborating with some of the most famous performers and singers who came to the then Russian capital (Wikipedia Contributors).

He also began to compose intensively. After a series of delays, as well as some difficulties with censorship, his first opera, Dmitry Donskoy—now lost except for the overture—was performed at the Bolshoi Theater in St. Petersburg in 1852 (Wikipedia Contributors).

Rubinstein as a pianist

As a pianist, Rubinstein bore many similarities to Beethoven, It is said that in his hands, the piano "caught fire", while members of the audience wrote that they left after his concerts, dumbfounded, because they had seen up close a force of nature (Wikipedia Contributors).

Sometimes, it is said, Rubinstein's playing was "too much" for listeners to "manage." American pianist Amy Fay, who wrote extensively on the European classical music scene, admitted that "while Rubinstein possesses a gigantic spirit in him, and is extremely poetic and authentic... For an entire evening, it's too much (Wikipedia Contributors).

Clara Schumann was even more critical. After hearing him play the Trio in C minor of Mendelssohn, he wrote that "it beat the piano so hard that I did not know how to control myself ... And often, in this way, he annihilated the violin and cello which... He couldn't hear any of that." Things did not improve when, a few years later, Rubinstein gave a concert in Breslau. She noted in her diary: "I was furious because she no longer plays. Either there is an absolutely wild noise, or a whisper with the soft pedal down. Even a cultured audience disagrees with an interpretation like this!" (Wikipedia Contributors).

However, the positive opinions are also the most. When Rubinstein played the Trio "ArchdukeBeethoven's 1868 violinist Auer and cellist Piati recalls: "It was the first time I had heard this great artist play. He was more likable in rehearsal.... That day I can remember how he sat down at the piano, with his lion head thrown back slightly, and began the five meters opening the main subject.... It seemed to me that I had never heard how the piano was actually played before. The grandeur of the style in which Rubinstein presented these five meters, the beauty of the tone, the softness of the touch of the keys and the artistry with which he manipulates the pedal, are indescribable (Wikipedia Contributors).

Schonberg described Rubinstein's piano timbre as the most sensual of those enjoyed by great pianists. Pianist Rafael Joseffy compared it to that of a "golden French horn." Rubinstein himself said in an interview, "Power with lightness, that's a secret of my touch.... I've sat for hours trying to mimic the tone of Ruby's voice in my playing." (Wikipedia Contributors).

Rubinstein advised young Rachmaninov how to achieve this touch vividly. "Just press on the keys until the blood is pouring out of your fingers." When he wanted, Rubinstein could play with great lightness, grace and delicacy. However, this aspect of his nature rarely appeared. He had quickly learned that the audience had come to hear him "thundering", so he did them a favor. Rubinstein's strong playing and strong temperament made a special impression during his American tour, where this kind of performance had never been heard before (Wikipedia Contributors).

Sergei Rachmaninov attended Rubinstein's first historic concerts as a piano student. Forty-four years later, he told his biographer, Oskar von Reisemann: "His playing captured my entire imagination and had a major influence on my ambitions as a pianist. It was not so much his magnificent technique that enchanted everyone, but the deep, intellectually refined musicality that came out of every note and meter he played, and made him stand out as the most original and unparalleled pianist in the world." (Wikipedia Contributors).

Music

Around 1850, Rubinstein decided that he wanted to be known not only as a pianist, but also as "a composer who performs his symphonies, concertos, operas, etc." Rubinstein was a prolific composer, writing both vocal and orchestral works and, of course, works for his favorite piano and chamber music. He was prolific in all periods of his life and easily published many of his compositions, as long as he knew that he would have the corresponding financial return (Wikipedia Contributors).

Rubinstein and Mikhail Glinka are considered the first very important composers of classical music in Russia, both of whom studied in Berlin with Siegfried Dehn. Glinka, as a student of Den, 12 years before Rubinstein, seized the opportunity to accumulate as much reserves of compositional ability as possible and use them in such a way as to give a whole new dimension to Russian music. Rubinstein, by contrast, chose to exercise his talent for composing, within the various styles of German music, forms that reflect Den's teaching. In completely different territory from Glinka, Schumann and Mendelssohn were the strongest influences on Rubinstein's music. [61] Consequently, Rubinstein's music has nothing to do with the "national" style music of the Group of Five. Another characteristic of Rubinstein's compositions is that his good ideas, such as those in the famous Ocean symphony, are developed in a rather hasty manner, without further elaboration. As Paderevsky later observed, "[Rubinstein] did not have the necessary concentration of patience of a composer.... He was prone to grandiose clichés in the climax moments, with the precedence of excessively long themes, later imitated by Tchaikovsky, in his less inspired pieces." (Wikipedia Contributors).

However, the Piano Concerto no. Rubinstein's No. 4 was the work that influenced all of Tchaikovsky's major piano concertos, especially the first (1874–5), while its last part, with its overture and scintillating main theme, formed the basis for the finale of Balakirev's Piano Concerto in E major. In the same work, the first part was written, partly under the influence of Piano Concerto No. 2 by Rubinstein (Wikipedia Contributors).

In 1854, Rubinstein embarked on a four-year concert tour of Europe,[24] the first of those to follow in a decade. Being 24 years old, he feels himself ready to offer to the public as an accomplished pianist, but also as a worthy composer and -very soon- acquires the reputation of a virtuoso. As was the trend at the time, many of the works he presented were his own compositions. At several concerts, Rubinstein conducted one of his orchestral works and then played as a soloist in one of his piano concertos. His highlight was conducting the famous Leipzig Gevandhaus Orchestra at the Ocean Symphony on November 16, 1854. Although reviews about his virtues as a composer were mixed, when he played a solo recital a few weeks later he received rave reviews (Wikipedia Contributors).

Rubinstein, in the winter of 1856-7, together with Elena Pavlovna and a large part of the tsarist family, toured Nice, France. He even had extensive discussions with her about plans to promote music education in their homeland. These bore fruit with the founding of the Society of Russian Music (RMS) in 1859 (Wikipedia Contributors).

Later life

In 1862, a conservatory was inaugurated, which was to become one of the most important musical institutions in the world, the St. Petersburg Conservatory. It was an evolution of the "Society of Russian Music" (RMS), which had been founded three years earlier. Rubinstein was not only its founder, but also its first director, hiring excellent teachers for its operation (Wikipedia Contributors).

Public opinion had doubts about whether a Russian music school could indeed be Russian. A lady of "good society", when the composer told her that classes would be taught in Russian and not in a foreign language, exclaimed: "What, music in Russian?! That's an original idea!" In fact, it said: "... and of course it is not surprising that music theory will be taught for the first time in the Russian language at our Conservatory.... until now, if there was anyone who wanted to study it, he was obliged to take lessons from a foreigner, or go to Germany..." (Wikipedia Contributors).

Conversely, there were those who feared that the Conservatory would not be Russian enough. Its founder received a lot of criticism, including from the famous "Group of Five". However, the critic M. Zetlin wrote: "The very idea of a conservatory is true, a spirit of academicism that could easily turn into a bastion of routine, but, of course, the same could be said of conservatories around the world. The truth is that the Conservatory has indeed raised the level of musical culture in Russia. The inappropriate way Balakirev and his friends have chosen is not necessarily appropriate for everyone." (Wikipedia Contributors).

It was during this period that Rubinstein caught the eyes of the public, with works such as his Piano Concerto No. 4, 1864, and the opera The Demon, 1871. Between these two works he composed the orchestral Don Quixote, which Tchaikovsky found "interesting and well written", if a little "episodic" (sic) (Wikipedia Contributors).

Death

Rubinstein continued to tour as a pianist and conductor. In 1887, he returned to the St. Petersburg Conservatory with the aim of its overall upgrade. It expelled low-performing students, fired or downgraded many teachers, set strict admission and examination requirements, and revised the curriculum. He gave lessons twice a week on the whole of piano literature and personally took charge of the most talented piano students. During the academic year 1889 – 1890, he gave weekly lectures-recitals for the students. However, in 1891 he resigned again and left Russia, because by tsarist decree much changed in the internal regulations of the Conservatory. One of them, which particularly bothered him, was that the admission and annual awards of students were now based on racial criteria instead of on their real merit – essentially at the expense of the Jews. The composer settled in Dresden and began giving concerts again in Germany and Austria, almost all for charity (Wikipedia Contributors).

Rubinstein, towards the end of his life, had taken on only a few students, giving them private piano lessons. One of them was Josef Hofmann, who would later become one of the best pianists of the 20th century. Despite his feelings about national politics in Russia, he returned there occasionally to visit friends and family. He gave his last concert in St. Petersburg, on January 14, 1894. With his health deteriorating, he settled in his country house in Peterhof in the summer of 1894. He died there on November 20 of the same year, probably from heart disease that tormented him for some time (Wikipedia Contributors).

Recognition today

Much of Rubinstein's output was quite popular in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, rivaling even the appeal of Tchaikovsky's works. By the mid-twentieth century, his fame faded, but this attempt at D minor remained his most enduring major composition and hovered near the fringes of the standard repertoire. Echoes of the work abound in Tchaikovsky's piano writing (Anton Rubinstein).

"Rubinstein became a footnote in Russian history in a way that doesn't deserve it," said Leon Botstein, who conducted a rare production of Rubinstein.Daemon» which ran from July 27 to August 5 in New York, as part of a college festival (Baranello).

Bibliography

Anton Rubinstein - Ivan the Terrible Op. 79 (1869). Directed by verbosomusicante, 2016. YouTube, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RRM9-ipD_DE.

Anton Rubinstein - Piano Concerto No. 4,  Op. 70 (1864). Directed by Bartje Bartmans, 2016. YouTube, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mLpg39XnBaQ.

Anton Rubinstein : Caprice Russe for Piano and Orchestra Op. 102 (1878). Directed by Rodders, 2020. YouTube, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yu75-1AKRzw.

Anton Rubinstein: Piano Concerto No. 1 in E Minor, Op. 25. Directed by Johann Rufinatscha, 2019. YouTube, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6hg7yRyZYIM.

Anton Rubinstein: Piano Concerto No. 2 in F Major, Op. 35 (Complete). Directed by Johann Rufinatscha, 2015. YouTube, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5dNIemn0XUk.

Anton Rubinstein : Suite in E-Flat Major for Orchestra Op. 119 (1894). Directed by Rodders, 2021. YouTube, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J6OeCcMi8QE.

Anton Rubinstein : The Merchant Kalashnikov, Selections from the Opera in Three Acts (1877-79). Directed by Rodders, 2021. YouTube, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y6p7SqkMmFo.

Baranello, Micaela. “It Was Russia’s Most Popular Opera. Then It Disappeared.” The New York Times, 20 July 2018. NYTimes.com, https://www.nytimes.com/2018/07/20/arts/music/demon-rubinstein-opera-bard.html.

DEMON_opera by A. Rubinstein (Hvorostovsky, Grigoryan)_2015_Act 3_English Subtitles. Directed by Bethanythorn, 2019. YouTube, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3uTgVsaVIUc.

Ivan the Terrible (Rubinstein) - Tchaikovsky Research. http://en.tchaikovsky-research.net/pages/Ivan_the_Terrible_(Rubinstein). Accessed 12 Oct. 2022.

Piano Concerto No. 1 (Rubinstein) - Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Piano_Concerto_No._1_(Rubinstein). Accessed 12 Oct. 2022.

“Piano Concerto No. 2 (Rubinstein).” Wikipedia, 22 July 2021. Wikipedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Piano_Concerto_No._2_(Rubinstein)&oldid=1034922002.

“Piano Concerto No. 4 (Rubinstein).” Wikipedia, 22 Dec. 2021. Wikipedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Piano_Concerto_No._4_(Rubinstein)&oldid=1061600154.

“The Demon (Opera).” Wikipedia, 1 Sept. 2021. Wikipedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=The_Demon_(opera)&oldid=1041818022.

“The Merchant Kalashnikov.” Wikipedia, 31 Mar. 2021. Wikipedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=The_Merchant_Kalashnikov&oldid=1015195143.

Wikipedia Contributors. “Αντόν Ρουμπινστάιν.” Βικιπαίδεια, 4 June 2022. Wikipedia, https://el.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=%CE%91%CE%BD%CF%84%CF%8C%CE%BD_%CE%A1%CE%BF%CF%85%CE%BC%CF%80%CE%B9%CE%BD%CF%83%CF%84%CE%AC%CE%B9%CE%BD&oldid=9512733