his nature. He had learned quickly that audiences came to hear him thunder so he
accommodated them. Rubinstein’s forceful playing and powerful temperament made an
especially strong impression during his American tour, where playing of this kind had
never been heard before. During this tour, Rubinstein received more press attention than
any other figure until the appearance of Paderewski a generation later.
Rubinstein’s concert programmes, like his playing style, were gargantuan. Hanslick
mentioned in his 1884 review that the pianist played more than twenty pieces in one
concert in Vienna, including three sonatas, the Schumann F sharp minor plus
Beethoven’s D minor and Opus 101 in A major. Rubinstein was a man with an
extremely robust constitution and apparently he never tired He had a colossal repertoire
and an equally colossal memory until he turned fifty, when he began to have memory
lapses and had to play from the printed score. Paderewski heard Rubinstein towards the
end of his career, remembering great moments alternating with memory slips and chaos.
Rubinstein was most famous for his series of historical recitals – seven consecutive
concerts covering the history of piano music. Each programme was enormous. The
second, devoted to Beethoven sonatas, consisted of the ‘Moonlight’, ‘Waldstein’,
‘Appassionata’, E minor, A major (opus 101), E major (opus 109) and C minor (opus 111)
sonatas. Again, this was all included in one recital, The fourth concert devoted to
Schumann, contained the Fantasy in C major, ‘ Kreisleriana’, Etudes Symphoniques,
Sonata in F sharp minor, a set of short pieces and ‘Carnaval’. This did not include
encores which Rubinstein played at every concert. Rubinstein played this series of
historical recitals in Russia and throughout Eastern Europe. In Moscow he gave this
series on consecutive Tuesday evenings in the Hall of the Nobility, repeating each
concert the following morning in the German Club free of charge for the benefit of the
students.
Rubinstein concluded his American tour with this series, playing the seven recitals over a
nine day period in New York in May 1873.
Rachmaninoff first attended Rubinstein’s historical concerts as a twelve year old piano
student. Forty-four years later he told his biographer Oscar von Riesemann, ‘[His
playing] gripped my whole imagination and had a marked influence on my ambition as a
pianist.’ Rachmaninoff explained to von Riesemann, ‘It was not so much his magnificent
technique that held one spellbound as the profound, spiritually refined musicianship,
which spoke from every note and every bar he played and singled him out as the most
original and unequalled pianist in the world.’
Rachmaninoff’s detailed description to von Riesemann is of interest:
‘Once he repeated the whole finale of [Chopin’s] Sonata in B minor, perhaps he had not
succeeded in the short crescendo at the end as he would have wished. One listened
entranced, and could have heard the passage over and over again, so unique was the
beauty of the tone. I have never heard the virtuoso piece ‘Islamey’ by Balakirev, as
Rubinstein played it, and his interpretation of Schumann’s little fantasy ‘The bird as