Program: BEETHOVEN: Piano Concerto No. 3 in C Minor, Op. 37;
BRAHMS: Piano Concerto No. 1 in D Minor, Op. 15; Capriccio in B-flat Minor, Op. 76, No. 2; Intermezzo in B-flat Minor, Op. 117, No. 2; SCHUBERT: Impromptu in A-flat Major, D. 899, No. 4; CHOPIN: Scherzo No. 2 in B-flat Minor, Op. 31 -Artur Rubinstein, piano/Concertgebouw Orchestra/Bernard Haitink Bonus: Rubinstein at 90–Conversation with Robert MacNeil
Studio: DGG Unitel Classics DVD 00440 073 4445 (Distr. by Universal)
Video: 4:3 full screen color
Audio: PCM Stereo
Duration: 111 minutes; 20 mins. (interview)
Rating: ****
To see the legendary Artur Rubinstein (1887-1982) in concert never fails to mesmerize, and here the Old Master is playing in the empty Concertgebouw with only Haitink and his splendid orchestra, as if film-maker Hugo Kaech were deliberately capturing Beethoven and Brahms as chamber music. Taped 27-31 August 1973, Rubinstein is 86-years-old, and the musicians attend to his every note as if it were the last time they would hear him. The Beethoven–which Haintink and the orchestra will soon tape as part of a complete cycle with Ashkenazy–emerges with patient delicacy, Rubinstein making a slight ritard at the end of phrases to linger with this dramatic piece which he played do many years before with Toscanini. The camera finds every instrumental entry, particularly the bassoon’s announcement of the fateful key-change at the development section, and the bassoons running colloquys with clarinets and piano. Rubinstein takes almost the entire first movement with eyes closed–shades of Karajan–but he watches his own hands during the cadenza, much of which rolls out like the last movement of the Waldstein Sonata. At the tympanic entry for the coda, director Kaech pulls back to place Rubinstein and company within the great Concertgebouw Hall, so only the music and not the men fill the space.
The E Major Largo is filmed as a meditation: from Rubinstein’s opening chords and the burnished violins which respond, we focus on Rubinstein’s profile, like Mount Rushmore. When the tutti comes, we see Haitink, then we have Rubinstein’s hands on the keys and their reflected image on the Steinway. All the musicians not playing are rapt with Rubinstein’s liquid figures. The clarity of execution could well apply to Mozart as to Beethoven. Haitink’s own contribution, his vibrating left hand, wants more warmth in the expression than is his usual sang-froid mechanics. Much of the passagework is Rubinstein’s solo right hand, which we see in reflection. The last page already hints at the mysteries of the slow movement of the G Major Concerto. Rubinstein launches into the Rondo, the clarinet right behind him. The camera behind Haitink catches the new zest in the music, the alternations between piano and tympani right on cue. Again, a series of nuanced ritards lead to the orchestral ritornello, now white-hot and with clipped phrases up to the clarinet’s secondary theme. Double exposure for piano and clarinet (and background bassoon) followed by the fughetta. The texture palpably lightens as Rubinstein and Haitink permit a degree of bravura dalliance to permeate the performance. The old magic is still there, the Rubinstein tone and the grand line, the veteran panache. Rubinstein’s last right-hand run is all fleetness, the orchestra quick to raise the molten level of intensity, a real joy in collaboration as the last shot takes it all in from the back of the hall.
Haitink makes one huge gesture to instigate the Brahms D Minor Concerto, a work Rubinstein has dominated in my consciousness since I first heard his inscription for RCA with Fritz Reiner. Camera on the violins as they play the sad, melodic response to the thunderous opening. Full violin section for the last big tutti prior to Rubinstein’s entry inside the piano‘s open lid triangle, here taken as baroque concerto, outlining the D Minor scale without actually quoting the main theme. Rubinstein’s octaves are as huge as ever, his plastic handling of the melancholy theme luxurious. Early, Rubinstein has an extended cadenza which gives Haitink pause to listen. The rhythmic surges occur naturally, Rubinstein is able to accelerate the tempo without a seam, right up to the French horn solo. The first period ends intimately, only for Rubinstein and Haitink to explode into a series of tempests between piano, tympani, and celli. The metrics become asymmetrical, then the uneasy waltz emerges over the martial first motif, frenzied, and the clarion recapitulation. The thematic line becomes incredibly taut: a much tighter leash here than in Rubinstein’s last commercial recording with Zubin Mehta, Rubinstein‘s technique here more secure. The bass fiddles usher in the huge coda, the main theme now a whirlwind, and Rubinstein no less demonic, the principals tumbling into the Abyss as one.
No pause for the Adagio, a requiem, which Brahms indicated pays tribute to both Schumann and the composer’s mother. Intimacy of affect juxtaposes itself against the massiveness of scale, Rubinstein’s unbroken line taking us to the clarinets which usher in the huge, staggered wail of mortality. The dirge proceeds classically, no mannerisms, no indulgence to temperament: the tragedy s implicit in the sad, mourning figures and the dark hues that sidle step-wise towards Calvary. Rubinstein proceeds directly to the Rondo, another oceanic tidal wave of graduated emotions, with Rubinstein’s adding tiny rhythmic inflections according to his own lights. The French horn, brass, and tympani open a new statement of ritornello, now a somber, Lisztian dance of death. Haitink milks the middle section theme, and Rubinstein answers with an abbreviated nocturne that become skittish in tandem with the French horn. Metronomic fervor for the fughetta, and another plummet into Romantic Agony, Brahms style. The cadenza could be Rubinstein’s farewell to youthful passions, followed by a sweet French horn and wistful arpeggios from Rubinstein. A little march–against the Philistines, I daresay–and then all trills and cascades to the monumental coda, an apotheosis in music if ever there were one for a Titan.
The four solo selections derive from a salon, Rubinstein in concert tails. He opens with Schubert’s A-flat Impromptu, flowing, right-hand filigree and a melody directly from a suave cello. I attend to Rubinstein’s left hand, ever active in molding a line and insisting on bass harmonies that move the music forward. After the Schubert’s valedictory beauty, Rubinstein continues with the Capriccio in B-flat Minor by Brahms, all staccati and apoggiaturas, frisky but melancholy and eminently lyrical. Everything in Rubinstein sings; his pianism is all vocal inflection, a debt he claimed he owed Emmy Destinn. The B-flat Minor Intermezzo is rainy-day Brahms, sad, wistful, nostalgia haunted by Schumann and a sense of mortality. The Chopin Scherzo is a Manichean struggle of dark and light, the camera using double exposure to profile Rubinstein while his own hands confront us at a 90-degree angle. The burnished autumn of Brahms becomes volatile and fateful in Chopin, an abbreviated sonata-movement whose last chords prove quite shattering – the look on Rubinstein’s face, his set jaw line, all musical and spiritual resolution.
“Rubinstein at 90” is an interview at Rubinstein’s home in Paris, on the Avenue Foch. Robert MacNeil queries him on his “prodigious appetite for life,” and Rubinstein replies by talking about his failing eyesight–which has now opened his ears and made time to listen to Mahler, singers, violinists, pianists, everything. His motto since youth is the Polish equivalent of “I will not give in!” A failed suicide attempt at age 20 in Berlin gave Rubinstein a new life, a new appreciation of the joy and vitality of life. When MacNeil tries to characterize Rubinstein as “the best” pianist of his time, Rubinstein scoffs. “Nothing in Art can be ‘the best.’ It can only be different–itself. Each artist is a world, a universe unto himself.” We see Rubinstein with Andre Previn and the London Symphony, performing an excerpt from the Grieg Concerto, which Rachmaninov called the most perfect concerto. Later, Rubinstein celebrates his own “warhorse,” the G Minor Concerto of Saint-Saens, which Ravel admired enough to imitate its orchestration. As for communication with an audience, Rubinstein speaks of an invisible “antenna” of emotion that emanates, projects itself to an audience and holds them. Does Rubinstein believe in God? He states his God is not an old man with a beard, but an immense power that answers the key question: why are we here?
— Gary Lemco
