THE CD PLAYER PLUS - Ultra High Fidelity Magazine

the state of Israel, he tours, giving 20
concerts in just 23 days.
It is only in 1958 that he returns
to Poland. In 1964 he performs in the
Soviet Union. In both countries he is
greeted with almost hysterical enthusiasm.
However he will never agree to
play in the countries responsible for the
Shoah and the destruction of his family.
At the age of 83, he leaves Nela, his
wife of 43 years, to live with a woman
in her 20’s, Annabelle Whitestone. He
had entrusted her with two of his protégés,
and he has been seeing her in
secret when he is in Geneva, before finally
moving in with her. It is a bright
but brief love story, considering Arthur’s
advanced age. She helps in the writing
of his second book, which is dedicated
to her.
Annabelle says of her late husband
that he “once sold as many records as
rock stars, and was as much at ease in
the White House as he was with his
chums Picasso and Charlie Chaplin.” In
January of 2008, she organized an event
titled Remembering Rubinstein, a day of
concerts and presentations at the Royal
Academy of Music. Annabelle herself
went on to marry a British publisher
whom Rubinstein himself had introduced
her to.
An urn containing Rubinstein’s ashes
is buried in the Rubinstein Forest in
Israel.
Epilogue
If I have dedicated so much of this
article to Rubinstein’s young years, it is
because there can be found the essentials
of his life. Starting with the 1960’s
I could have told you little you don’t already
know, such as a list of his musical,
social and romantic successes.
His was a changing personality, fluctuating
between extreme self-confidence
and periods of depression, or at least of
anguish. An authentic epicurean, he
sought out gastronomic adventures and
the finest wines and spirits. He was often
in debt, the result of the excesses resulting
from his hedonism and his impatient
nature. He could pass in but a few
days from a garret to a palace, from total
penury to abundance, and back again.
Because of Arthur Rubinstein’s incomparable
charisma, his joyousness,
Rubinstein in
Film and Print
Aside from Rubinstein’s wellknown
modern recordings,
available in full stereo, he
also made numerous liverecording
player piano music rolls for
the Aeolian Duo-Art system and the
American Piano Company (AMPICO),
all of which survive today. Unlike
common player pianos, the expensive
reproducing pianos could reproduce
dynamics and even pedal action.
Several performances were for some
years available on the Klavier label,
though they are now largely out of
distribution.
These reproducing piano performances
have been much praised,
especially those of 1929, performed on
a Bechstein reproducing piano. In some
circles these are still considered to be
Rubinstein’s best performances.
Rubinstein has been the subject of a film too. François Reichenbach, a great art
collector and amateur, and a filmmaker who has immortalized painters, sculptors,
actors, directors, musicians and singers, made a 1969 film about him, titled Love of
Life.
His two-volume memoir are certainly to be recommended. The first volume, My
Young Years, are available only on the second hand market. The second volume, My
Many Years, is even rarer. There are numerous biographies still in print, including
Rubinstein: A Life in Music by Harvey Sachs, and Grand Obsession: A Piano Odyssey
by Perri Kniz.
his evident love of playing, his hilarious
sense of humor, this adorable ham
conquered not only audiences, but also
the numerous women with whom he
had not always smooth affairs. Yet he
was always forgiven by his mistresses,
who were at once lovers and mothers,
encouraging him, advising him, sometimes
tyrannizing him. They also gave
him admiration and affection.
To be frank, he himself admitted he
had been neither a model father nor an
ideal spouse, caught up as he was in the
maelstrom of his career and his equally
effervescent social life.
I cannot recall reading as much
about such a major figure as Arthur
Rubinstein. Especially engaging is his
autobiography, though it is confusing,
because he always gives the impression
that he was older than he was in reality.
In reading it, I found myself stopping to
check dates, only to realize that, having
only just grown out of short pants, Arthur
was already receiving the passionate
favors of a long list of much older
women who loved him.
Precocious in everything, this remarkable
adolescent lived his social,
romantic and sexual life like a seasoned
man, and on the contrary he lived his
old age like an adolescent, with a passion
and a love of life that are beyond
compare.
ULTRA HIGH FIDELITY Magazine 69
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