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Everything is different, everything is an adventure to Rubinstein—the Boston concert, the limousine ride, the cigar, the subsequent performances in Toronto, Washington, Chicago. He plays on life as he plays on the piano-with style, with taste, with exuberance, and with a spontaneity that is all the more breathtaking because it is marvelously original. Last month, within a period of ten days, he reeled off eight major concertos by Beethoven, Mozart and Brahms in Carnegie Hall; few other instrumentalists in the world, regardless of age or standing, would have attempted such a grueling program—and none could have matched it.
The concerts were billed as the anniversary of yet another adventure, the 60th year since Rubinstein's American debut. Anniversary? Rubinstein likes to pretend that he cannot stand the thought of such a dreary thing. "I hate anniversaries!" he roars. "They are feasting on something that is stale." Not so. They are feasting a most remarkable virtuoso. Rubinstein has played more concerts before more people, sold more record albums (more than 5,000,000), grossed more money and attracted a more widely popular following than any other classical instrumentalist in history. At a time when artists 25 years his junior are gearing down for retirement, he is shifting into overdrive. This season he will perform virtually every third day in concert halls from Ithaca to Istanbul. The real wonder is not that he is still going so strong, but that he is playing better than ever.
"Musical Valise." It is not solely a matter of technique: he has always had an abundance of that. It has to do rather with style, with the maturing of a heart and mind plunged into a lifelong love affair with music and, to a degree few men are blessed to know, with life itself. Fired by this infinite capacity for self-renewal, Rubinstein has simply never stopped improving. Where the artistry of most virtuosos begins to decline at about 60, he has conquered the heady impetuosity that sometimes flawed the playing of his early years. He thrives by infusing a dash of improvisation, "a drop of fresh blood," into each performance. He will even experiment with new fingerings "that suddenly occur to me" in the middle of a performance. "It is dangerous, I admit," he says, "but that is the way music develops." As a result, says Pianist Rudolf Serkin, "his music is becoming more reflective, but at the same time it is becoming younger. It's almost as if he's playing everything for the first time."
Indeed, Rubinstein is not content merely to rework his repertory. He is constantly developing it. It is not easy, for his "musical valise," as he calls it, is already brimming with the widest repertory of any living pianist. As far back as 1919, he played a series of 27 recitals in Mexico City with only an occasional repetition. Since then his catalogue has expanded in all directions, with the exception of the avantgarde, "whom I leave to the youngsters." He has long been the world's reigning Chopinist, he excels in French impressionistic and modern Spanish music, and he is as at home with Bach as he is with Stravinsky.