Artur Rubinstein - Biography
Artur Rubinstein the great Polish/American pianist was born in Lodz Poland on January 28TH 1887 and died in Geneva Switzerland on December 20th 1982. Rubinstein was a son of a well to do merchant by the time he was seven he was giving concerts in Lodz. When he was ten he went to study in Berlin where he became acquainted with the great German violinist Joseph Joachim who was to conduct for his Berlin debut the Mozart A major Piano Concerto. By his late teens he was in Paris where he became friends with Dukas and Ravel and other fin de siècle luminaries. He came to perform in America for the first time in 1906 where his tour was met with a mixed reception. Rubinstein admitted that he was more interested in the good life when he was young and didn’t study and practice that much. Though a rather plain looking he was great ladies man and already a considerable raconteur. In his late twenties he built a considerable career in Spain where he became a masterful interpreter of Falla, Granados and Albeniz. He was also a favorite in South America and had works written for him by the great Brazilian composer Villa-Lobos. By the 1920’s Rubinstein developed the consistency and mastery that would ripen during very long career. By this time he was to gain his reputation as an incomparable interpreter of Chopin. He was along with his recital partner Violinist Paul Kochanski to become the major proponents of the music of Poland’s second gretest composer, their friend Szymanowski.
Rubinstein was to marry in 1932 to Aniela Mlynarska daughter of a well known Polish conductor and they were to have four children one of whom is the actor John Rubinstein. Rubinstein through the 1930’s lived in Paris, the Nazi defeat of France in 1940 forced Rubinstein who was Jewish to become an émigré to America. Rubinstein settled with his family in Beverley Hills and began to his nearly forty years of recording with RCA Victor (Rubinstein’s earlier EMI recordings where released in America by RCA). He was also to become along with Heifitz and Horowitz the most popular of concert artists. Rubinstein recorded much of his repertoire three times first on 78 rpm, Mono LP, and then Stereo LP. He also was part of the so called ‘Million Dollar Trio’ that included Heifitz and on cello first Feuermann and after his death Piatagorsky. Rubinstein unlike many classical artists was an ebullient man and became friends with people from all ends of the artistic spectrum. As he became older he concentrated a bit less on romantic and modern virtuosic music and refined to a remarkable extent his interpretations of Mozart, Beethoven and Schubert. His unique tone never left him until he stopped performing at 88.
Rubinstein wrote two books of reminiscences when he was in eighties and they were in themselves a remarkable documentation of the artistic world of the first of Twentieth Century. Rubinstein who admitted to be indifferent Jew for most of his life became after the destruction of Polish Jewry including family members became an ardent Zionist and supporter of Jewish causes. Rubinstein in the last few years of his life went blind and died in Switzerland a few weeks short of his 97th birthday.
Nearly thirty years after his death Rubinstein is still one of the most popular of classical recording artists. A ninety four CD set of his complete recordings came out in 1999 on RCA.
