Anton Rubinstein contributed
very heavily to Russian music. A pianistic genius, a great  conductor,
a formidable composer and a public activist with a cause, he attracted
people from all walks of life.
Anton Rubinstein was heavily influenced by his mother, an excellent pianist
in her own right, who became his first music instructor.
The pianist and composer Anton Villoine then took over Anton’s tuition
taking the 11-year-old prodigy to his first ever world tour, which was
extremely successful. In Paris, Frederic Chopin and Ferenz Liszt were quick
to applaud the young pianist’s larger than life talent.
It wasn’t very long before Anton Rubinstein became touted as a Russian
Liszt, the King of Pianists, getting paid like a superstar and applauded
by royalty and ordinary music lovers everywhere…
Anton Rubinstein retained fond memories of the many encounters he had early
in his life with Emperor Nicholas I who lavished him with gifts of exceptional
quality and value Rubinstein had never seen before or after…
As a young man Anton Rubinstein went to study in Germany. At 20 he returned
home to the generous cares of the Grand Duchess Yelena Pavlovna, the wife
of Emperor Nicholas’ brother. Beautiful
and extravagant, she wanted to be the center of an intellectual milieu
where Rubinstein was to play the role of a Minister of Music. The
Maestro preferred to call himself a musical stoker though…
Rubinstein now lived in Yelena Pavlovna’s palace and was supposed to spend
long hours conversing with his highborn benefactress. It was during one
of those friendly chats that they decided to establish a Music Society
in Russia where the Grand Duchess would be chairperson and Rubinstein –
her second in command. The Society started organizing regular public concerts,
first in the capital and then in other big cities across the Empire. Anton
Rubinstein often played and conducted during those concerts sometimes including
his own compositions to the program.
Soon after they opened music classes as part of the Music Society, which
eventually became Russia’s first music conservatory and which Rubinstein
modeled after the Leipzig Conservatory, organized by the famous German
composer Felix Mendelssohn-Bartoldi.
Despite their considerable age difference, Mendelssohn took a strong liking
to his young Russian colleague. Music enthusiasts both, these two men were
driven by a strong desire to musically educate the
societies they lived in.
The opening of the St.Petersburg Conservatory was all important for it
introduced Russia to the fundamentals of professional music and hundreds
of its graduates eventually became famous the world over…
Put at the head of the St.Petersburg Conservatory, Anton Rubinstein was
immediately overwhelmed by an avalanche of critical comments. Even the
progressively minded music critic Vladimir Stasov was quick to denounce
the Conservatory as “a seed plot for mediocrity and proliferators of harmful
and tasteless notions”.
Despite all that criticism, the number of those willing to study there
was really mind-boggling. One day a lady came into Rubinstein’s office
with a stupid looking son in tow. “No one wants to take him, so I thought
maybe he should go study music,” she said…
And still, most of the people who came to the capital from around the nation
were decently prepared and played various musical instruments.
Of the 179 applicants admitted to the Conservatory, the 22-year-old Justice
Ministry clerk Pyotr Tchaikovsky was one and he was chosen to study composition
and arrangement under Anton Rubinstein expert guidance…
“The powerful persona of the Conservatory’s director inspired in all of
us endless love mixed with a great deal of fear,” Tchaikovsky later recalled.
“He was a man of enormous practical knowledge, scope and compositional
skills unbelievable for someone who was only 30-years-old…”
Pyotr Tchaikovsky and Anton Rubinstein… We’ll talk more about their relationship
in our next program. Now it is suffice to say that Anton Rubinstein all
but anticipated many of Tachaikosky’s compositional discoveries and revelations…
Looking at the people who surrounded Anton Rubinstein we should also mention
his younger brother Nikolai. While Anton reigned supreme in Petersburg
Nikolai did much the same thing in Moscow. Handsome, likeable and hugely
endowed musically, he sometimes seemed to be even more successful than
his elder brother. Like Anton, Nikolai opened and led Moscow’s branch of
the Music Society and also became the founder of the Moscow Conservatory.
Anton Rubinstein often came down to Moscow to see his brother and play
concerts as part of his extensive performance schedule. The darling of
the European concertgoers, he was the first Russian  musician
to play in the United States giving a staggering 215 concerts during an
eight-month tour.
Many of Anton Rubinsteins’s great contemporaries were equally rave about
his phenomenal pianistic talent. “His playing was like magic, his volcanic
temperament immediately filling out the entire space of the concert hall
leaving everyone captivated and completely oblivious of everything else,”
Camille Saint-Saens wrote.
Anton Rubinstein regularly teamed up on stage with the best musicians of
his day, including the great Polish violinist Henryk Weniawski, giving
a series of music history programs and organizing all kinds of charity
events.
Anton Rubinstein spent tens of thousands of rubles helping students, establishing
scholarships, organizing the first-ever international competitions for
young musicians and handing out money awards to the winners. Small wonder
that this man was literally idolized by young musicians.
His larger than life persona was always the focus of public attention,
his portraits made by Russia’s leading painters. Rubinstein also left behind
a veritable gallery of musical portraits…
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Illustrations:
T.Khoprova, “Anton Grigogievich Rubinstein”, Leningrad,
Muzgiz, 1963
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