THE CD PLAYER PLUS - Ultra High Fidelity Magazine

In the picture above you see the famous
man, immortalized with a life-sized
statue in his native city of Łódź. But
look on the next page, where you’ll
see a lad with curly blond locks and sparkling
eyes. Who is this cherub who is such a
charmer at the age of three? What path will
he follow, what life will he lead? What will
he leave behind?
We are stunned when we study the avalanche
of what has been written about him,
about the many demonstrations of his prodigious
talents, not only in piano but also in
languages and in history. Such intelligence!
And did I mention his charm?
Yet his life nearly ended when he was
but 20, when he attempted suicide. Having
Software
The 20 th Century
Rubinstein
failed in that enterprise, he will embrace life
without limit, refusing any guilt over sterile
regrets. Well into his nineties, he will affirm,
with a touch of humor, that to find the
happiest man he knows, he has but to look in
the mirror, This exceptional being impressed
me no end, and I invite you to discover Arthur
Rubinstein…or rediscover him.
To follow this sparkling personality
across nearly a century is a voyage
of delightful discovery. In his Memoirs,
there is no trace of the banality, of the
platitudes and clichés that are often the
mainstay of biographies. Without wish-
by Reine Lessard
ing to minimize any gaps or errors that
may be found in the two volumes of
his life, I can say that his phenomenal
memory and his incomparable storytelling
talent provide a rich trove of
fascinating historical details. Rubinstein
lived through two world wars and was a
witness to the horrors of Communism,
Nazism and Fascism. Such an autobiography
can outshine many a history
book, whose author may have his own
agenda.
Arthur Rubinstein sees the light of
day in 1887 in a Jewish family in Łódź,
which is today in Poland, though it was
then dominated by the Russian empire.
In Polish and other Slavic languages,
Arthur is often written Artur, but his
name really is spelled with an h. His later
impresario, the legendary Sol Hurok,
will bill him as Artur, perhaps because
it sounds more exotic. He will in fact
call himself “Artur” in countries where
that spelling is current, just as he will be
“Arturo” in Spain and Italy.
One event in particular launches his
precocious career. At the age of two he
borrows his sister’s piano in order to
exercise his memory by improvising
popular airs. Yet none of his forbears for
several generations had shown a particular
interest in music (Arthur is not
related to the pianist and composer Anton
Rubinstein, nor to another Russian
pianist, Nicolas Rubinstein). And yet his
uncle, Nathan Follman, is sufficiently
cultivated to realize that not only is Arthur
fascinated by the piano, but he has
a considerable gift. Fluent in German,
Follman writes to Joseph Joachim, the
director of the Royal Academy of Music
in Berlin. In a warm letter of acknowledgement,
Joachim advises him to find
a good teacher for the lad, but cautions
against putting undue pressure on the
boy. He adds, if you could bring him to me
in Berlin, I would be delighted to see him.
In the meantime Arthur’s mother
signs him up for lessons with a Madame
Pawlowska, whose rigidity however repels
him. He is soon introduced to another
teacher, one whose appearance is
strange and worrisome for the sensitive
ULTRA HIGH FIDELITY Magazine 63