Anton Rubinstein - Romance in B minor, Op.69/4

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Very beautiful Romance by the quite famous russian composer Rubinstein.

Anton Rubinstein (1829 — 1894) was a Russian pianist, composer and conductor who became a pivotal figure in Russian culture when he founded the Saint Petersburg Conservatory. He was the elder brother of Nikolai Rubinstein who founded the Moscow Conservatory.

As a pianist, Rubinstein ranks among the great 19th-century keyboard virtuosos. He became most famous for his series of historical recitals—seven enormous, consecutive concerts covering the history of piano music. Rubinstein played this series throughout Russia and Eastern Europe and in the United States when he toured there.

Although best remembered as a pianist and educator (most notably in the latter as the composition teacher of Tchaikovsky), Rubinstein was also a prolific composer throughout much of his life. He wrote 20 operas, the best known of which is The Demon. He composed a large number of other works, including five piano concertos, six symphonies and a large number of solo piano works along with a substantial output of works for chamber ensemble.

Some fun facts...

- people thought he looked like Beethoven

- they couldn't handle his playing for a whole evening (quote: give me Tausig for the whole evening but not him!

- Clara Schumann after hearing him play Mendelssohn C minor Trio in 1857 : "he so rattled it off that I did not know how to control myself ... and often he so annihilated fiddle and cello that I ... could hear nothing of them."

-Vieuxtemps said: His power over the piano is something undreamt of; he transports you into another world; all that is mechanical in the instrument is forgotten. I am still under the influence of the all-embracing harmony, the scintillating passages and thunder of Beethoven's Sonata Op. 57 [Appassionata], which Rubinstein executed for us with unimagined mastery.

-His tone was strikingly full and deep. 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.

-RACHMANINOV: [His playing] gripped my whole imagination and had a marked influence on my ambition as a pianist.

Also he said concerning chopin Sonata:
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 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 Prophet was inimitable in poetic refinement:
to describe the diminuendo of the pianissimo at the end of the "fluttering away of the little bird" would be hopelessly inadequate. 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.
One of Rubinstein's greatest secrets was his use of the pedal. He himself very happily expressed his ideas on the subject when he said, "The pedal is the soul of the piano." No pianist should ever forget this.

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Видео Anton Rubinstein - Romance in B minor, Op.69/4 канала Gamma1734