If there was an award for the pianist who came closest to the artistic ideal in the widest repertoire, it would almost certainly go to Rubinstein. Whether playing Fauré or Brahms, Albéniz or Beethoven, Ravel or Schubert, the results were sublime. Yet he is most celebrated for his Chopin. That composer's aristocratic poise and elegance found a perfect match in Rubinstein’s own interpretative genius.
His golden tone, exquisite sense of timing and sensitivity to phrase and structure were tailor-made for Chopin's nocturnes, waltzes and mazurkas. Yet remarkably he sustained that same level of musical intuitiveness and profound eloquence throughout the more heated virtuosity of the concertos, scherzos, ballades, preludes, sonatas and polonaises.
There was seemingly nothing that Rubinstein could not play at the highest levels of distinction. This ranged from concertos and solo recitals to forming two ‘million dollar’ piano trios, first with Jascha Heifetz and Emanuel Feuermann and then with Henryk Szeryng and Pierre Fournier, with whom he made outstanding recordings of Brahms, Schubert and Schumann.
Incredibly, as witness sublime video recordings of concertos by Grieg, Saint-Saëns, Chopin, Beethoven and Brahms, he was still playing like an angel in his eighties. Rubinstein was one of the most widely recorded of pianists. That said, his love affair with the gramophone got off to a shaky start. He refused to record for the early acoustic process as he felt it made the piano ‘sound like a banjo’.
