monment with a remark like this: “Now look at this kind of bass, it is the first time that
Chopin uses it.” Liszt would explain it all on a historical basis. He always showed what
was going on in the music.’
Even Liszt did not fully satisfy Rosenthal’s curiosity: ‘In spite of all these splendors I
grew weary after seven years, like Tannhäuser at the Venusberg. A new desire, a new
thirst, tormented me! I had heard Anton Rubinstein.’
The two had met on a train bound for Pressburg (Bratislava) where Rubinstein was about
to perform. Rosenthal had been tipped off by: ‘my friend and guardian Ludwig
Bösendorfer, the piano Mogul, as Bülow called him. Overjoyed, I hurried home to
rummage in the drawers of old desks until I found a letter of introduction addressed (in
Cyrillic characters) ‘To Anton Grigorievitch Rubinstein’ and signed Ivan Turgenev’. I
had met Turgenev, together with Saint-Saëns and Gounod, at the Paris home of that most
musical of all singers, Mme. Pauline-Garcia, when I played for her as a so-called child-
prodigy and brought her the compliments of Franz Liszt.’
Source: The website ‘Moriz Rosenthal’ by Allan Evans, 1996, which reproduced parts of
Rosenthal’s article.
ROTH
Bertrand Roth was born in St Gallen, Switzerland, on 12 February 1885 and died on 24
January 1938 at Berne. He studied at Leipzig Conservatory under Salamon Jadassohn
and Wensel. He later studied with Liszt at Weimar and accompanied him to Budapest
and Rome. He taught at Frankfurt Conservatory and also at Dresden and was one of the
founders of the Raff Conservatory. He gave concerts of all the Beethoven Sonatas and of
Haydn, Mozart and Brahms, and was still playing Liszt’s Sonata in his eighties. He ran a
music salon which produced contemporary music and fostered young musicians, and he
died at the age of eighty-three following a traffic accident. Bertrand Roth did not make
any discs but he did make Liszt rolls although none is in Denis Condon’s collection.
RUBATO
Rubato is an essential part of the cantabile style and indeed of all piano playing. It is
used by all composers, in piano music from all periods and in all styles of piano
compositions. Playing with rubato is playing with a degree of rhythmic freedom rather
than metronomically. Having said this, the degree of rubato in a Chopin or Liszt piano
piece is more than in a Beethoven piano sonata and is much more than in a Bach
keyboard piece.
‘Rubato’ is an Italian word meaning ‘robbed’ and it is inherent in the use of the term that
what has been taken must be given back.
The two types of ‘Chopin rubato’, and the ‘Liszt rubato’, are analysed in the articles on
‘Chopin’ and ‘Liszt’.