Current mood:	sleepy
Current music:	Beethoven Eroica Symphony--Sir John Eliot Gardiner

Artur Rubinstein, my best friend...

Reaching the end of a book is like saying good bye to a friend... when reading biographies, you feel this by a tenfold. After reading Artur Rubinstein's autobiography, it feels as though I've lost my best friend. Today I read the last pages of this giant two-volume set filled with adventures and passions of Rubinstein's rich life. It must've been well over a thousand pages... I started reading the first volume, My Young Years two summers ago in New York when I was at Bard. I started the second volume, My Many Years soon after but I took a huge break from reading because well, let's just say the second volume isn't as good as the first. Either way I can confidently say that I enjoyed this book more than perhaps any other that I've read in a long long time (outside of Sagan's Cosmos).

Through reading about Rubinstein's life in these pages, I got to experience a world which no longer exist today... staring at these pages was like jumping into a wormhole. It was a portal into an artist's life of the early 1900s. Artur Rubinstein reached stardom in a world which had no television, mass media, or the internet. His view and take on life is SO different from that of our own today... to think that he passed away only a couple decades ago baffles my mind.

I can't say I know of any other human being who lived his life to the fullest the way Rubinstein lived his. His life began so early leaving home to study the piano at such a young age. He was a fearless and passionate person.  Above all, you could tell he was an honest man. Reading these pages, I felt as though it was just him and I sitting in a cafe 'til the sun came up talking about the beauties of  life... with nothing to hide. How could ONE man experience SO much in one life?  Of course I'm sure he made up a huge chunk of these stories, but I could tell "his" truths were not too far from the reality.  If anything, his made up stories in many ways hid inside them the wisdom of truth.  The tragedies, the comedies, the romances, and the triumphs... they were ALL very real to him.  Artur Rubinstein was a true concert pianist in every sense of the word.... he was an artist, a philosopher, an explorer, a "passionate lover of life" as he would put it. If I could live half the life that he led, I would die a happy man.

Next up for me is Berlioz's Memoires... I've already ordered it from Amazon, it should get here any day now!

On that note I'll end this entry with two of my favorite Rubinstein passages...

I took out the belt from my old worn-out robe and fastened it with a knot. My bathroom had a clothes hook which was placed high enough to hold me. I pulled up to a chair, secured the belt on the hook, and put it around my neck. As I pushed the chair away with my foot the belt tore apart and I fell on the floor with a crash.

If I saw today such a scene on television, I would roar with laughter, but in my role as the living hero of this tragicomedy, my first reaction was a severe nervous shock; I cried bitterly, disconsolately, for a long time, lying where I had fallen, with no strength left. Then, half-consciously, I staggered to the piano and cried myself out in music. Music, my beloved music, the dear companion of all my emotions, who can stir us to fight, who can inflame in us love and passion, and who can soothe our pains and bring peace to our hearts--you are the one who, on that ignominious day, brought me back to life.
--From My Young Years

These concerts remind me of a funny little quarrel with Heifetz. He bitterly resented that all the publicity bore the names Rubinstein, Heifetz, Piatigorsky--always in the same order. "Why can't we change it and give each one of us a chance to be the first-named"? said Jashca.
      "I couldn't care less," I answered indifferently, "but as far as I know, all trios are published for piano, violin, and violincello, and it is the tradition to publicize the players in this order."
      Jascha didn't want to give in so soon. "I have seen some trios printed for violin and violincello, accompanied by the piano," he said.
      "They must have been printed by yourself, Jascha."
      "What do you mean?" he said indignantly. "I've really seen them."
      I began to see red. "Jascha," I shouted, "if God played the violin, it would still be printed Rubinstein, God, and Piatigorsky." No reply from Jascha. But we did make records of those three trios and put much work and love into them.
--From My Many Years