Anton rubinstein rapidshare

Anton Rubinstein regarded music as an international language. He believed that music may communicate beyond words directly to human souls. His ancestry was Russian, Jewish, and German, and his parents converted to Christianity because of the fear of anti-Semitism in the Russian Empire.

Anton Rubinstein and his brother Nikolai did not exhibit any Russian nationalism in their music, albeit their student Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky became popularly identified with Russia. In the season of Anton Rubinstein made a triumphant eight-month tour of the United States.

It was a sensational marathon of piano recitals in many cities across the USA. His other compositions include six symphonies, four piano concerti, and many chamber works for piano and strings or ensemble music with piano.

Among his 20 operas, "The Demon" stands out for it's lavish score, inspired by the eponymous Romantic poem of Russian poet Mikhail Lermontov. His power over the piano is something undreamt of; he transports you into another world; all that is mechanical in the instrument is forgotten.

Appassionata, which Rubinstein executed for us with unimagined mastery. He enthralled you by his power, and he captivated you by the elegance and grace of his playing, by his tempestuous, fiery temperament and by his warmth and charm.

His crescendo had no limits to the growth of the power of its sonority; his diminuendo reached an unbelievable pianissimo, sounding in the most distant corners of a huge hall. In playing, Rubinstein created, and he created inimitably and with genius. He often treated the same program absolutely differently when he played it the second time, but, more astoundingly still, everything came out wonderfully on both occasions.

Rubinstein was also adept at improvisation — a practice at which Beethoven had excelled. He counterpointed it in the bass; then developed it first as a canon, next as a four-voiced fugue, and again transformed it into a tender song. It was superb. Villoing had worked with Rubinstein on hand position and finger dexterity.

From watching Liszt, Rubinstein had learned about freedom of arm movement. When caught up in the moment of performance, Rubinstein did not seem to care how many wrong notes he played as long as his conception of the piece he was playing came through. They were huge, and many observers commented on them. Then his fingers were square at the ends, with cushions on them. It was a wonderful hand. He spreads his hands as if he were going to take in the universe, and takes them up with the greatest freedom and abandon!

Those who valued interpretation as much or more than pure technique found much to praise. With him the piano sounded like a whole orchestra, not only as far as the power of sound was concerned but in the variety of timbres. With him, the piano sang as Patti sang, as Rubini sang. Rubinstein told the young Rachmaninoff how he achieved that tone. When he wanted to, Rubinstein could play with extreme lightness, grace and delicacy.

He rarely displayed that side of his nature, however. He had learned quickly that audiences came to hear him thunder, so he accommodated them. During this tour, Rubinstein received more press attention than any other figure until the appearance of Ignacy Jan Paderewski a generation later. Rubinstein was a man with an extremely robust constitution and apparently never tired; audiences apparently stimulated his adrenals to the point where he acted like a superman.

He had a colossal repertoire and an equally colossal memory until he turned 50, when he began to have memory lapses and had to play from the printed note. Rubinstein was most famous for his series of historical recitals—seven consecutive concerts covering the history of piano music.

Each of these programs was enormous. Again, this was all included in one recital. This did not include encores, which Rubinstein sprayed liberally at every concert. Rubinstein concluded his American tour with this series, playing the seven recitals over a nine-day period in New York in May 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 for the benefit of students, free of charge.

One listened entranced, and could have heard the passage over and over again, so unique was the beauty of tone…. Inimitable, too, was the soul-stirring imagery in the Kreisleriana, the last G minor passage of which I have never heard anyone play in the same manner.

He also did his share of guest conducting both before and after his tenure with the RMS. Rubinstein at the podium was as temperamental as when at the keyboard, provoking mixed reactions amongst both orchestral musicians and audiences. As a composition teacher, Rubinstein could inspire his students and was noted for his generosity in time and effort he spent working with them, even after a full day of administrative work.

He could also be exacting and expected as much from them as he gave to them. This assignment would be due the following day. At other times, he would expect students to improvise a minuet, a rondo, a polonaise or some other musical form. Rubinstein warned his students continually to guard against timidity, not to stop at a difficult place in a composition but to leave it and press ahead.

He also encouraged them to write in sketches with indications of whatever form in which that piece would be written and to avoid composing at the piano. Notable students include pianist Sandra Drouker. Edward Garden writes in the New Grove,. As was the penchant at the time, much of what Rubinstein played were his own compositions. At several concerts, Rubinstein alternated between conducting his orchestral works and playing as soloist in one of his piano concertos.

One high point for him was leading the Leipzig Gewandhaus orchestra in his Ocean Symphony on 16 November Although reviews were mixed about Rubinstein's merits as a composer, they were more favorable about him as a performer when he played a solo recital a few weeks later. Rubinstein spent one tour break, in the winter of —57, with Elena Pavlovna and much of the Imperial royal family in Nice.

Rubinstein participated in discussions with Elena Pavlova on plans to raise the level of musical education in their homeland; these bore initial fruit with the founding of the Russian Musical Society RMS in The opening of the Saint Petersburg Conservatory , the first music school in Russia and a development from the RMS per its charter, followed in Some in Russian society were surprised that a Russian music school would actually attempt to be Russian.

One "fashionable lady", when told by Rubinstein that classes would be taught in Russian and not a foreign language, exclaimed, "What, music in Russian! That is an original idea! And surely it was surprising that the theory of Music was to be taught for the first time in the Russian language at our Conservatory Hitherto, if any one wished to study it, he was obliged to take lessons from a foreigner, or to go to Germany.

There were also those who feared the school would not be Russian enough. Rubinstein drew a tremendous amount of criticism from the Russian nationalist music group known as The Five. The very idea of a conservatory implied, it is true, a spirit of academism which could easily turn it into a stronghold of routine, but then the same could be said of conservatories all over the world.

Actually the Conservatory did raise the level of musical culture in Russia. The unconventional way chosen by Balakirev and his friends was not necessarily the right one for everybody else.

It was during this period that Rubinstein drew his greatest success as a composer, beginning with his Fourth Piano Concerto in and culminating with his opera The Demon in Between these two works are the orchestral works Don Quixote , which Tchaikovsky found "interesting and well done," though "episodic," [16] and the opera Ivan IV Grozniy , which was premiered by Balakirev.

Borodin commented on Ivan IV that "the music is good, you just cannot recognize that it is Rubinstein. There is nothing that is Mendelssohnian, nothing as he used to write formerly. By , ongoing tensions with the Balakirev camp, along with related matters, led to intense dissension within the Conservatory's faculty.

Rubinstein resigned and returned to touring throughout Europe. In previous tours, Rubinstein had played primarily his own works. Steinway's contract with Rubinstein called on him to give concerts at the then unheard-of rate of dollars per concert payable in gold—Rubinstein distrusted both United States banks and United States paper money , plus all expenses paid. Rubinstein stayed in America days, giving concerts—sometimes two and three a day in as many cities.

May Heaven preserve us from such slavery! Under these conditions there is no chance for art—one simply grows into an automaton, performing mechanical work; no dignity remains to the artist; he is lost The receipts and the success were invariably gratifying, but it was all so tedious that I began to despise myself and my art. So profound was my dissatisfaction that when several years later I was asked to repeat my American tour, I refused pointblank Despite his misery, Rubinstein made enough money from his American tour to give him financial security for the rest of his life.

Upon his return to Russia, he "hastened to invest in real estate", purchasing a dacha in Peterhof , not far from Saint Petersburg, for himself and his family. Rubinstein continued to make tours as a pianist and give appearances as a conductor. In , he returned to the Saint Petersburg Conservatory with the goal of improving overall standards. He removed inferior students, fired and demoted many professors, made entrance and examination requirements more stringent and revised the curriculum.

He led semi-weekly teachers' classes through the whole keyboard literature and gave some of the more gifted piano students personal coaching. During the —90 academic year he gave weekly lecture-recitals for the students.

He resigned again—and left Russia—in over Imperial demands that Conservatory admittance, and later annual prizes to students, be awarded along ethnic quotas instead of purely by merit. These quotas were designed to effectively disadvantage Jews.

Rubinstein resettled in Dresden and started giving concerts again in Germany and Austria. Nearly all of these concerts were charity benefit events.

Rubinstein also coached a few pianists and taught his only private piano student, Josef Hofmann. Hofmann would become one of the finest keyboard artists of the 20th century. Despite his sentiments on ethnic politics in Russia, Rubinstein returned there occasionally to visit friends and family. He gave his final concert in Saint Petersburg on 14 January With his health failing rapidly, Rubinstein moved back to Peterhof in the summer of He died there on 20 November of that year, having suffered from heart disease for some time.

Many contemporaries felt he bore a striking resemblance to Ludwig van Beethoven. Ignaz Moscheles , who had known Beethoven intimately, wrote, "Rubinstein's features and short, irrepressible hair remind me of Beethoven. Under his hands, it was said, the piano erupted volcanically. Audience members wrote of going home limp after one of his recitals, knowing they had witnessed a force of nature. Sometimes Rubinstein's playing was too much for listeners to handle.

American pianist Amy Fay , who wrote extensively on the European classical music scene, admitted that while Rubinstein "has a gigantic spirit in him, and is extremely poetic and original Give me Rubinstein for a few pieces, but Tausig for a whole evening. The performance gave her such a violent headache that the rest of the recital was ruined for her. Clara Schumann proved especially vehement.

After she heard him play the Mendelssohn C minor Trio in , she wrote that "he so rattled it off that I did not know how to control myself She noted in her diary, "I was furious, for he no longer plays. Together with an uninhibited use of the diminished 7 th chord, these characteristics are lavishly displayed in all four piano sonatas. Only the second-movement Allegretto con moto, a charming little march-scherzo, from the Third Piano Sonata, Rubinstein's own favorite, is altogether free from padding and very considerable reliance upon Felix Mendelssohn and Robert Schumann ; an instance of F.

Chopin 's influence is to be found in the scherzo of the Fourth Sonata, in which the rhythm is directly taken from the scherzo of F. Chopin 's Bb minor sonata. His greatest success as a composer came in a brief middle period which started with the Fourth Piano Concerto in D minor and finished with the opera Demon 'The Demon', , first performed in January Between these works are sandwiched two important orchestral works, Don Quixote , which Tchaikovsky thought was 'very interesting and well done' although 'episodic' in construction, and Ivan IV Grozniy , 'a wonderful piece' in Tchaikovsky's opinion; Tchaikovsky arranged both works for piano duet.

There is nothing that is Mendelssohnian, nothing as he used to write formerly'. In this powerful, imaginative and perceptive evocation of Ivan's complicated personality, Rubinstein dexterously incorporates a number of contrasting themes into an atypically unconventional variant of sonata form, with a slow, magisterial, fully integrated introduction; the inevitable sequences and diminished 7ths are for once used effectively and convincingly. Nor does he indulge in bombastic orchestration: the scoring is for a standard orchestra with double woodwind plus piccolo, normal brass including tuba , and only timpani in the percussion section.

Ivan IV Grozniy did not achieve the huge success of Demon or the Fourth Piano Concerto , both of which retain a precarious foothold in the repertory today. Together with its predecessors, the Fourth Concerto the full score of which was published in in a revised and improved version greatly influenced Tchaikovsky's piano concertos, particularly the first , and the superb finale, with its introduction and scintillating principal subject, is the basis of very similar material at the beginning of the finale of Balakirev's Piano Concerto in Es major; this finale was written down after Balakirev's death in by his collaborator and friend Sergey Lyapunov, who had heard Balakirev play it many times.

The first movement of Balakirev's concerto had been written, partially under the influence of Rubinstein's Second Concerto, in the 's. In the decade or so after , Demon The Demon' , with a libretto based on a well known Lermontov narrative poem, received no less than performances, by the end of the century, with the exception of Glinka's A Life for the Tsar , it had outstripped in popularity all other operas, including those of Meyerbeer to which it is partially indebted Tchaikovsky considered that, in spire of 'much padding'.

Demon contained 'lovely things', and it certainly influenced his opera Yergeny Onegin, which, like Demon is an opera in Three Acts, Seven Scenes' The delicate style of the Russian chamber romance which epitomizes the portrayal of Rubinstein's Tamara is echoed in Tchaikovsky's portrayal of Tat'yana In scene 3, Rubinstein's 'orientalisms' are as satisfactory as those employed in the later Symphony no 5 in G minor and the opera Kupets Kalashnikov 'The Merchant Kalashnikov' are unconvincing The part of the Demon himself is one of the finest in Russian opera, and was a favorite role of Chaliapin.

Liszt , and with which he tinkered over a period of 29 years, finishing up with seven rather than the original four movements, violin and cello concertos, innumerable songs, chamber music including violin, viola and cello sonatas and, besides the piano sonatas, many other piano pieces.

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