It occurs to me that I haven’t written about my own favorite pianists. As a pianist myself I’m bound to have some opinions on the matter; after all, I taught an entire semester course at the Fromm Institute about the history of the great pianists and piano playing in general.
Not long ago I consulted my library’s collection of recordings of the slow movement of the very first Beethoven piano sonata, Op. 2 No. 1 in F Minor. But I almost stopped for good after the first.
That’s because the first one was the grand old Artur Schnabel from the 1930s, in its latest beautifully remastered incarnation from the fine folks at Pristine Classical. As I sat there, captivated by Schnabel’s delicate rubato, elegant phrasing, and almost superhuman tonal control, I realized that there’s everyday good Beethoven playing, and there’s Schnabel playing Beethoven. Whole different ball game. Eventually I listened through the remainder of the recordings in my collection. Each had its own take on the movement, its own strengths and weaknesses. Despite the primitive recording tech of Schnabel’s 1935 outing, none of the other performances floated my boat the way Schnabel’s did.
Which made me think about those pianists who ring my bell particularly loudly, and have for as long as I’ve known those particular pianists. I’ll start at the top. This is the one pianist who has been my bestie for as long as I’ve been aware of him.
Arthur Rubinstein.
The late Terry Teachout wrote an article in which he bewailed Rubinstein’s posthumous slipping off the pianistic radar. He noted that other pianists of the early- to mid-twentieth century were much more highly regarded nowadays, pianists such as Horowitz or Kempff or Hofmann or Rachmaninoff. But for me he remains the grand seigneur of the piano, an elegant musician with a straightforward and uncomplicated ear. There were bigger technicians. There were folks with more magical shadings of tone and dynamics. There were gutsier pianists. But Rubinstein checked off more boxes than anybody else. He kept at it for three quarters of a century and left us a stunning recorded legacy in addition to a host of memories of his larger-than-life onstage persona.
I experienced that persona a number of times growing up. Rubinstein would come to Denver and play either a solo recital or appear with the Denver Symphony. (That’s what it was called back then; nowadays it’s the Colorado Philharmonic.) I vividly remember one evening when he was playing the Chopin E Minor piano concerto on the first half and the Tchaikovsky B-flat minor on the second. The Denver audience was distinctly lukewarm towards the Chopin; it just wasn’t their kind of piece, I don’t think. That’s because they were a bunch of hicks. They clapped politely. I had been brought to the concert by the mother of one of my high school friends, and she was downright appalled by the Denverites lack of appreciation for Chopin and/or Rubinstein. Well, she groused beside me: we’ll stand up! And we did.
Rubinstein noticed the reserved nature of the audience, and I think it ticked him off. At least that was my impression from his demeanor when he came striding/stomping out onstage for the second half. He attacked the Tchaikovsky like an avenging fury. It may not have been a subtle performance—subtlety would have been wasted on that crowd anyway—but he punched that sucker through the rafters of the old Auditorium Theater. Appropriately titillated, the Denverites erupted into cheers, hoots, and hollers. Of course. Rubinstein clearly enjoyed the adulation pouring over the edge of the stage, but he had a look on his face, something to the effect of: peasants!! You want slam-bang, I’ll give you slam-bang!
Maybe I’m underestimating Denver audiences. (Nah.) I remember a solo recital Rubinstein gave us a Brahms F Minor sonata that I’ll always remember for its sheer commitment and care. He put the thing across magnificently, no easy feat. I don’t remember the audience response. Probably a different crowd than the bovine crew that frequented the Denver Symphony.
But it was via records by which I really absorbed all things Rubinstein. The Beethoven concertos with Leinsdorf/Boston. The Rachmaninoff 2nd with Reiner/Chicago. The Tchaikovsky with Leinsdorf. The solo albums of the Chopin Nocturnes; the Scherzos; the Ballades; the Waltzes. And the Schubert B-flat Posthumous, which ensured that I would indeed become a professional pianist. That recording (1970) was to me the almost unapproachable ideal of great piano playing. I was mesmerized by its poise, beauty, and sustained line. Eventually I determined to play that sonata; it was my most successful performance of my undergraduate years. Later in life I returned to it and gave several performances that were probably the best public piano playing I ever achieved. And it was all because that RCA Red Seal record with its gold-background title and grayscale photo of Rubinstein became a talisman to me of everything piano playing could be.
So of course I grabbed that huge magenta-and-white box set of his complete RCA recordings as soon as the fine folks at Sony made it available. That big heavy box remains a crown jewel of my record collection. Oh, I can’t say I actually sit down and listen to Rubinstein as often as I once did, but every time I do, I’m always swept back to those teenage days in my Denver bedroom, sitting there on the floor next to my RCA Victor record player with its red-cloth speakers, listening to Rubinstein over and over and over, whether in Beethoven or Schumann or Brahms or Tchaikovsky or whatnot. Pianistically speaking, he’ll always by my first love, a youthful infatuation that has echoed down the years and in one way or another shaped the musician I was eventually to become.