Foreword

The subject of this revelatory book is the Russian composer and pianist Anton
Grigoryevich Rubinstein (in no way to be confused with the late Polish master
Artur Rubinstein, who was no relation). Born in Balta Podolia (Ukraine) on 28
November 1829 (he died in Peterhof on 20 November 1894), he was Russian of
German extraction and Christian by virtue of his progenitors forced conversion from Judaism. This admixture served his critics well, but it was also the
reason for his versatility and solid Western European cultural standards. Anton
Rubinstein has suffered the unhappy fate of having his name and fame as composer, pianist, and pedagogue perpetuated while nearly all his enormous catalogue of compositions has disappeared from the general repertoire.
Rubinsteins reputation rests on his having been, by general consensus, the
greatest pianist since Liszt, and the many accounts of his performances range
from deeply sensitive to electrifying, although, unfortunately, he died just a
little too early to leave us any recordings. His repertoire was enormous and allembracing, and his most famous series of concerts was the cycle of seven Historical Recitals with which he toured Europe in 1885. These programs began
with early keyboard music of the English, French, Italian, and German schools,
moving through all the important classical and early romantic composers and
ending with a selection of Russian piano music. Schumann and Chopin featured
in his music above all others. Only early music of Liszt appearedRubinstein
felt that Liszts later forays into modern harmony were unacceptableand
Brahms was not featured at all. (Rubinsteins antipathy to Brahms may be easily
accounted for: Brahms borrowed a great many ideas from Rubinsteins music without acknowledgment but, aided and abetted by Clara Schumann, then
caustically criticized Rubinsteins output, root and branch.) Cutting himself
off from both the conservative school of European music as exemplied by
Brahms, and the modern school as exemplied by Liszt, left Rubinstein somewhat isolated as a composer, all the more so as he regarded all his Russian forerunners as distinctly amateur, he mistrusted the growing school of nationalism,
and he took a very long time to appreciate that a relative cosmopolitan Russian
like Tchaikovsky had any worth. He thought all along that real music had died
with Schumann and Chopin. Not surprisingly, then, he was a very conservative
composer indeed. But this had its virtues: while the Russian school was emerging in something of a hit-or-miss fashion, Rubinstein, with his thorough German background, brought a great deal of order to chaos. He is revered in all
books about Russian music for his abiding interest in rich, broad, and highly
competent music education, and, of course, he will always be remembered for
having founded the St. Petersburg Conservatory. (His brother Nikolay was the