Eight decades at the piano, Chopin without peer
Arthur Rubinstein (1887–1982) played publicly for eighty years, from a child prodigy Joseph Joachim endorsed to a final Wigmore Hall bow at eighty-nine. Many held him peerless in Chopin—and after 1914 he refused Germany's stages for the rest of his life.
Born Artur on 28 January 1887 in Łódź, Congress Poland, youngest of seven in a Jewish textile-factory family, he was nearly named Leo until an eight-year-old brother insisted on Artur after a violin-playing neighbor. Absolute pitch at two, prodigy status by four, he refused his father's offered violin for piano's harmony. Joseph Joachim, hearing the four-year-old, promised to supervise serious study. Debut came 14 December 1894 with Mozart, Schubert, and Mendelssohn. At ten he moved to Berlin; at thirteen, in 1900, he played with the Berlin Philharmonic under Karl Heinrich Barth—heir to Liszt, Czerny, and Beethoven's teaching line.
Paris in 1904 brought Ravel, Dukas, Thibaud, and Saint-Saëns hearing his Second Concerto. Carnegie Hall debut (1906) and early U.S. tours disappointed; by 1908, destitute in Berlin, he survived a failed hanging and felt "reborn" into love of life. London's 1912 Draper salon seated him with Stravinsky and Casals. World War I London recitals and 1916–17 Spanish and South American tours unlocked Granados, Albéniz, de Falla, and Villa-Lobos—he became dedicatee of Fantasía Bética, Rudepoêma, and Stravinsky's Petrouchka movements. Appalled by German atrocities in Belgium, he never played Germany again after 1914; most of his Polish family later died in the Holocaust. He joked he avoided only Tibet (too high) and Germany (too low).
A 1934 technique retreat repaired early reliance on talent; wartime Brentwood years and 1946 U.S. citizenship centered his career in America. He partnered Heifetz, Casals, Szeryng, and the Guarneri Quartet, recorded most Chopin except the Études, and gave an all-Chopin Moscow recital in 1964. The Love of Life (1969) won the Oscar for Best Documentary; he retired May 1976 at Wigmore Hall, nearly seventy years after first playing there. Fluent in eight languages, he claimed photographic memory—learning Franck's Symphonic Variations on a train, practicing on his lap—and could "pass" a Brahms symphony in his head at breakfast. Married to Nela Młynarska in 1932, father of Eva and actor John among others, he left her in 1977 for Annabelle Whitestone yet remained proud of his Jewish heritage as an agnostic. He died 20 December 1982—still the Chopinist The New York Times called without peer.
Source: Arthur Rubinstein
