Just meeting Rubinstein was a thrill for any pianist. He was a real link to tradition in western piano music. He was a friend of Rachmaninoff and he knew Debussy.
Polish-American classical pianist (1887-1982)
A pianist who played in public for eighty years and made Chopin sound like the only composer who ever mattered — though he could turn Beethoven, Liszt, and a dozen others into events worth crossing oceans for.
Arthur Rubinstein was born in Poland on 28 January 1887 and spent the next eight decades at the keyboard. He became known internationally for his interpretations of classical repertoire, with Chopin at the center and a wide circle around it: Beethoven, Mozart, Schubert, Liszt, Tchaikovsky, Saint-Saëns, Schumann. He played until 1982, the year he died on 20 December, by which point he'd outlasted most of his contemporaries and several entire schools of pianism.
Sourced, dated quotes from Arthur Rubinstein
Just meeting Rubinstein was a thrill for any pianist. He was a real link to tradition in western piano music. He was a friend of Rachmaninoff and he knew Debussy.
Yes, I am very lucky, but I have a little theory about this.
Rubinstein was wonderful. For three days he spent hours playing the piano in my room, and then asking me what I thought of this and that.
My father, good or bad, mistakes or no, had a direct line from his heart to the music to the people, to the audience. He played with logic and his own inner truth.
Arthur Rubinstein once said to me that he couldn't think when he played, that something else took over.
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