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When he strides onto a concert stage today, there is not a virtuoso living who can match his communion with the audience. "I love it like a woman," he says. His bearing becomes regal, his face is masked in concentration. His back erect, he kneads his fingers, bows his head for a moment's thought, and then eases into the keyboard. In driving home a run of climactic chords, he rises higher and higher off the piano bench as though he were intent on physically overwhelming the music. In more lyrical moods, his arms and hands move with a kind of gracefully looping symmetry, and always his eyes stare into space. "I like to look up over the piano so I can listen and follow the lines of the piece," he explains. "Looking at your fingers for accuracy is too confusing. I'd rather miss a few notes than play by phrases instead of as a whole."
Pedal & Heart. This ability to project the grand design of the music, to crystallize the ebb and flow of its inner voices, is at the foundation of Rubinstein's artistry. His music, especially compared with the neurotic fancy-flights of other pianists, is also remarkable for its sanity, directness and healthy emotionalism. Beyond that, he possesses an elegance of tone that is the envy of the profession. With a combination of pedal, touch and heart, he sings his way into the poetic soul of the music. He can take a diminuendo passage and without spoiling the line, make it grow progressively softer while articulating each note straight to the back row of the hall. That a piece of percussive machinery like the piano can be made to produce such distinctions in tone is nothing short of miraculous.
Rubinstein has no idea how he produces his tone. It comes partly from a physique that looks as though it had walked out of a fun-house mirror. His dimensions (5 ft. 8 in., 167 Ibs.) are deceiving. His trunk is too short for his legs; yet he has the arms and hands of a man twice his size. His biceps are as big as a shotputter's, and his fist looks like the business end of a sledge hammer. His fingers, whose tips are cushioned from years of "cleaning the piano's teeth," are spatula-shaped; the all-important little finger is as long as the index finger, which is just a shade shorter than the middle finger. Thus, with the extension of his long thumbs, he can encompass a twelve-note spread on the keyboard. Most pianists are happy if they can handle a tenth.
When it comes to exercising the fingers, Rubinstein contends that too much practice destroys the spontaneity of a performance. Besides, he says, "I want to live—live passionately. So I don't believe in all this nonsense of tying oneself to the keyboard all day." While most musicians practice for five of six hours every day, he will go for days without looking at a piano. Some younger pianists, he says, in their note-niggling pursuit of perfection, end up "taking a performance out of their pocket instead of out of their heart." This lack of involvement, he feels, extends to the audience as well, a result of being raised on note-perfect stereo recordings. Says Rubinstein: "In the old days, young girls would commit suicide after an overwhelming musical performance. Nowadays they go to Schrafft's and have some ice cream."