The Rubinstein Collection, Volume 5

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艺人: Arthur Rubinstein
语种: 其他
厂牌: RCA
发行时间: 2001年08月07日
专辑类别: 合集、杂锦

专辑介绍

Arthur Rubinstein, queried as to which of his numerous recordings he liked best, answered, "Why, the newest one of course!" Although the great pianist enjoyed making records immensely, his was a spontaneous art, characterized by an ever-changing approach that, by its own nature, resisted being fixed for all time on an unchangeable document. But now that the pianist belongs to history, his phonographic legacy—all of it—assumes an even greater importance.

As Harvey Sachs notes in his biography (Rubinstein: A Life, Grove Press, New York, 1995)' Rubinstein made more recordings of pieces by Chopin than of all other composers combined. For those of us who heard Rubinstein only in his last decades, he seemed—by virtue of his age and national origins—a closer link to Chopin than anyone else alive. (If Chopin, Mendelssohn, Schumann, and Liszt—all born in the years 1809-II—had lived to the age Rubinstein reached, they would have been able to hear him perform their works). Thus, anyone who would like to study the evolution of Rubinstein's Chopin playing over a forty-year period can now do so."

Rubinstein's interpretations of some of these compositions did change over the years, but Sachs is essentially correct in his appraisal by saying that the earliest HMV recordings disprove, once and for all, Rubinstein's often-repeated statements about the faultiness of his technique until his summer of hard work in 1934; they support, instead, the remarks of those observers of his early work who described his technique as brilliant. He sometimes glossed over difficulties out of laziness, but not because he was incapable of mastering them. On the whole, his pre-World War II Chopin playing was more dazzling, more freewheeling, and more original than his post-World War II playing. (In the early 1990s, Nela Rubinstein heard some of the early recordings for the first time in many years [in a CD transfer], and exclaimed to [her eldest daughter] Eva, that's how he played when I first knew him and fell in love with him! ') But his playing was also more careless, and not only with respect to textual accuracy. The earlier recordings are more episodic; each section of a given piece has something delectable to offer, but the sections don't always mesh convincingly, and the rhythmic underpinnings sometimes collapse—a fault that hardly ever mars the later versions, in which the use of rubato is more subtle. My guess is that when Rubinstein made the later recordings, he was profoundly concerned about the responsibility that his reputation as the elder statesman of Chopin interpreters placed on him, and that he was determined to impress on future generations the primary importance of understanding and revealing the structural logic behind Chopin's music.

It is no great surprise to learn that Rubinstein, like so many other musicians of his generation, was moderately—but not especially— concerned with being musicologically "correct" about which editions he used for his concerts and recordings. But he could, on occasion, be a little surprising and inconsistent about such matters. On the one hand, we can discover in his autumnal recordings of Chopin's Fantaisie-Impromptu (1964), his Waltz, Op. 69, No. 1, or of the F Minor Mazurka, Op. 68, No. 4 (1963 and 1966 respectively) that he chose to favor unusual alternative versions of these pieces that differed considerably harmonically from the more familiar editions of Jules Fontana; and that (for his last traversal of Mazurkas) he recorded Arthur Hedley's newly published edition of the cited F Minor Mazurka that superseded the foreshortened Auguste Franchomme version that he used for both of the two earlier mazurka collections. Conversely, how could he have ever chosen to end the Nocturne, Op. 32, No. 1 in B Major—a notorious gaffe—on all three of his recordings?

It was all, I daresay, a matter of personal pride: It is no secret that Rubinstein was more than a trifle miffed that the Polish editorial committee, who completed the edition of Chopin's works shortly after Paderewski's death in 1941. high-handedly failed to give him pride-of-place. Rubinstein quite outspokenly considered himself to be, well, Poles apart from Paderewski ("a bad pianist")! Ergo, we find—time and again—Rubinstein showing increasing partiality to such German editors as Günther Henle, if only for no other reason than his publications diverged from Polish options.

Rubinstein made his first recording with orchestra—the Brahms Piano Concerto No. 2, with Albert Coates and the London Symphony Orchestra for HMV—on October 22 and 23, 1929. It was a difficult session and the result, to say the least, did not meet with the soloist's approval. In the second volume of his memoirs [My Many Years, Alfred A. Knopf, New York, 1980] he relates:

It was impossible to see Mr. Coates before the recording, as I had hoped. We were given only two days for this longest of all concertos with its four movements, and... Everything seemed to be against us; the piano [a Bechstein] had a good sound but it was slightly out of tune and the tuner was not able to fix it. Mr. Coates conducted at the opposite end of the room, far away from me, so of course I had as neighbors the percussion and brass instruments at the back of the orchestra. In these circumstances there was no way of establishing a close contact between conductor and soloist, and neither of us liked any of the sequences we played. I considered the two days of hard work a useless effort and begged [HMVs Fred] Gaisberg to destroy the takes. If I remember well, I said to him, 'Our contract contains a clause where I have the right not to allow a record I do not find acceptable to be issued.' Gaisberg promised. I departed for South America very disappointed... Fred Gaisberg had betrayed me; my record of the Brahms Concerto was on sale. In my anger I was ready to break off our contract. 'You have no reason whatever to get so angry. Musicians like it and the sales are promising,' said he, adding that Albert Coates had nothing against the issue of this wretched disc. Henceforth I promised myself to be more careful.

But from Harvey Sachs' biography of the pianist, the facts of Rubinstein's anecdote are curtly revised: The pianist's trip to South America did not take place until 1931 and, far from wanting the records destroyed, the Gramophone Company's files can find no trace of an objection, at the time, from Rubinstein. "The Brahms Concerto passed all our tests, and a very fine set of records has been obtained," a letter from HMVs Artists' Department routinely informed Rubinstein in January I930. "The work is being issued in England in a month or two's time.' Rubinstein did not reply—at least not in writing—and the company's correspondence indicates that before long he was eager to have the recording released in France."

The next two concertos in Rubinstein's discography were committed to wax a year-and-a-half later: Chopin's No. 2 in F Minor and Mozart's K. 488 in A Major, on January 8th and 9th, 1931, with Barbirolli and the London Symphony Orchestra. Rubinstein describes him as "a young Englishman of Italian descent... He played the cello but like many other cellists he had become discouraged with his instrument's limited repertoire and began a successful career as a conductor. With him it was a case of love at first sight. We felt our music the same way and inspired each other with our phrasing. For once I could play the concerto with closed eyes—I never had to look at him... John and I became close friends."

Rubinstein and Barbirolli became avid colleagues and frequent collaborators. The long series of recordings made for HMV with Rubinstein, Cortot, Schnabel, Kreisler and Heifetz established Barbirolli as an accompanist par excellence and quickly led to his appointment in 1936 to succeed Toscanini as chief conductor of the New York Philharmonic.

These earliest Rubinstein recordings of both Chopin concertos still hold their own in the catalog, although judicious cuts were made in both performances. Collective "wisdom," even to this day, is apt to view these incandescent works rather patronizingly, as record critic David Hall once described them: "keyboard improvisations with incidental orchestral accompaniment... they lack the beautifully rounded, well-knit construction and powerful impact of the composer's best solo pages." Despite undeniable advances in recording technology and the availability of subsequent, more textually complete Rubinstein interpretations in more modern sound, many connoisseurs of the pianist's artistry remain steadfast in preferring these 1931 and 1937 vintage efforts to most of the later ones. In countless ways, these caressing, lovingly nuanced renditions support Sachs' description of them as "more dazzling, more freewheeling, and more original."

A three-way comparison of Rubinstein's three versions of the Nocturnes is often intriguing: It is instructive to note that the pianist elects to eschew the repetition of a few bars in his 1937 and 1965 recordings of Op. 9, No. I but presents the first nocturne in its entirety in the 1950 set. Sachs opines that "both the 1936-37 English set and the 1965 American' set (but recorded in Rome) give so much pleasure and are so full of insights that I would not want to be without either of them. In general, there is a greater range of tempo and dynamic variation in the 1936-37 recordings, whereas the 1965 versions are stronger with respect to structural cohesion and give a more accurate idea of Rubinstein's sound." Yet surprisingly, the earliest and most recent editions are actually more sonorously reproduced than were the Hollywood readings of 1949-50. It is also edifying to rediscover that many of the "intermediate" interpretations successfully synthesize the architectural facets of Rubinstein's mellow ripeness and the jolting electrical energy that characterized his more youthful pianism. In essence, the I949~50 efforts veer more closely toward classical "objectivity" (I find his treatment of the F-sharp Nocturne, Op. 15, No. 2 the "purest" and most succinct of the trio), while the valedictory reappraisals have darkened the sonority and have become (as, for instance, in Op. 27. No. 1, Op. 32, No. 2 and Op. 37, No. 2) almost meditative and ponderously bass-heavy. Undoubtedly, with all three sets restored to circulation in improved sonics (the monophonie LP set of I949~50 has been out-of-print for many years), it will be good to be able to assess these interpretations which are, in their differing ways, unique.

—Harris Goldsmith

Harris Goldsmith—musicologist, critic, pianist and authors-writes extensively on music. His articles appear in many respected periodicals, including The Strad, The Musical Times, Musical America, High Fidelity, Keynote and The New York Times. His byline has appeared on many recordings, in both a literary and pianistic capacity. Mr. Goldsmith currently teaches piano and piano literature courses at the Mannes College of Music in New York City.

The Rubinstein Collection, Volume 5 - Chopin

专辑介绍

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