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Artur Rubinstein Was A Vampire
Artur Rubinstein, one of the most famous pianists of the twentieth century, was a vampire.
That's what famed composer Igor Stravinsky called him, accusing him of drinking the lifeblood of composers. They were having a heated argument over Stravinsky's music.
Rubinstein loved Stravinsky and championed his music to many audiences, far ahead of his time in terms of piano recital programming.
Even today, that is the case. Orchestras and soloists in those days (circa 1930) made careers and sold records on the strength of the tried and true war-horses, like Beethoven and Chopin.
They left the adventurous new pieces to a few brave souls like Artur Rubinstein, and various specialists. In fact Rubinstein played Stravinsky's crazy-sounding music around the world, making up his own arrangements of Stravinsky's orchestral pieces to create unique programs. He helped to popularize the thorny Stravinsky.
Rubinstein Championed Stravinsky's Music
Igor was a modern composer, a genius difficult to digest fully in post World War I times. People were longing for fun and brightness. It took decades after his initial success around 1900 for Stravinsky to penetrate the popular consciousness.
Audiences loved Stravinsky's orchestral works, which were all unique and haunting. Eventually he did prove himself a success as a modern composer, an event even more rare than flying pigs.
Stravinsky Accuses Rubinstein
But back in that heated moment in 1930 when Igor spoke with the injured venom of the penniless composer, this is what Stravinsky said, more or less, to the vastly successful concert pianist Artur Rubinstein: "You pianists become millionaires playing the music of the starving Mozart and Schubert and the poor mad Schumann, the tubercular Chopin and the sick Beethoven. Pianists are like a vampire, living off the blood of these great geniuses."
But now it's a hundred years later, and Stravinsky is one of the geniuses on which we vampires feed.
REFERENCES
Music History
What Killed the Golden Age of the Piano
Carl Tausig Cooks His Cat
I Meet Aaron Copland
George Sand Killed Chopin
Why Brahms Must Have Been Fat
Igor Stravinsky Loses His Cool
Vladimir Horowitz Goes To The Racetrack
Beethoven Was No Beauty
The World’s Largest Blue Danube Waltz
Was Mozart Murdered?
Beethoven’s Rage Over A Lost Penny
Franz Schubert, The First Bohemian
Chopin’s Singing Piano Tone
Stravinsky’s Good Luck
Tchaikovsky’s Greatest Fan
Hector Berlioz and the Orchestral Train Wreck
Piano Lessons with Papa Bach
Piano Lessons with Frederic Chopin
The Great Piano Craze of 1910
The American Piano Wars
Why Hugo Wolf Went Insane
Rachmaninoff and the Evolution of Pop Songs
Musical Feuds
Piano In The Past Was Better
The Master’s Hands
Einstein’s Piano
Einstein’s Violin Improvisations In Gypsy Style
A History of Piano and Numbers
Ryan Seacrest’s Piano Concerto #2
