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Incredible as it seems, at 50, with four decades of performing behind him, Rubinstein had yet to catch on in the U.S. Then he signs with a "fat and important-looking middle-aged gentleman" named Sol Hurok, and soon America too is at his feet. When World War II drives him from his Paris home, he settles for a few years in Hollywood. There he earns huge fees for dubbing the sound track of films like Song of Love, buys a Cadillac and plunges into the party circuit with such elegant cronies as Charlie Chaplin, Thomas Mann and Marlene Dietrich.
The least analytic of musicians, Rubin stein is unilluminating about his technique and repertory. "Compositions," he says, "were immediately clear to me through my born musical instinct. The music simply spoke to me." What it told him, he has already conveyed in his extraordinary performances and recordings; he has little to add here. He is better on his fellow musicians, particularly those whom he does not wholly admire. He proudly plays his new recording of the Grieg concerto for the sardonic Rachma ninoff, whose sole comment is "Piano out of tune." Jascha Heifetz patronizes him musically but seeks his advice on buying gentlemanly accouterments. His great rival, Vladimir Horowitz, hangs about Rubinstein's Paris home, accepting free meals and fussing over his encores. After they fall out, ostensibly because of a broken lunch date, Rubinstein delivers a left-handed salute: "The greatest pianist, but not a great musician."
As for Composer Igor Stravinsky, Rubinstein shows him how to make more money (go on tour as a pianist and conductor of his own works) and how to cure his impotence (have a good dinner and visit a brothel). What he cannot do is persuade Stravinsky to write lyrically for the piano instead of percussively. The Russian was a master of his métier, Rubinstein concludes, but he lacked "an original melodic invention."
Rubinstein confesses to feeling out of tune with today's world, in which "moral ethics have no place" and music is dominated by "emotionless" composers like Pierre Boulez. But he refuses to join those readers of his first volume who saw him as a throwback to a better age. From his earliest years, he says, the world has shown him so much mistrust, hypocrisy and greed for power that he is not sure there ever was a Belle Epoque. More likely, with his talent, ebullience and "unconditional love of life," he has created his own epoch as he has gone along, a Rubinstein epoch. And a remarkable one it has been too.
—Christopher Porterfield
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