How Rubinstein plays his way out of a memory lapse
OrchestrasIn Chopin, of all composers:
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He was the ultimate concert pianist, and “covering” was part of his professionalism.
That whole recital is available to view on You Tube. Memory slip not withstanding, it’s some of the finest playing you’ll ever hear.
I recall Julian Bream saying that whenever he made a mistake in a live performance he would go back and repeat the mistake in the hope that listeners would think it was in the score all along.
Break usually performed from memory and had a vast repertoire!
When the short-lived Russian Revelation label issued this recital (minus the encores), they presented it “as-is”. When RCA later presented it as part of their comprehensive Rubinstein series, they did a little splicing and “fixed” it. I’m sticking with the “as-is”.
The Viennese judge their musicians and singers based upon their musicianship as opposed to their technique. A great number of wonderful artists who would make occasional flubs would have been long forgotten if we held them to robotic standards. My piano professor used to tell me to “play through” if I had an occasional lapse, or flub. Rubinstein recovers brilliantly and professionally here. That said, his earlier namesake, Anton Rubinstein was known to flub throughout his career and he is also a legend.
No-one holds wrong notes against Cortot, either.
True, but they weren’t memory lapses but part of the risk of recording at a time when no editing was possible.
The personal improvisatory versions of performers of scores which have been carefully worked-out, is quite irritating. If you prepare well, conspicuous mistakes are not necessary at all.
Apparently you’ve never been a professional performer.
I work with them regularly. And they would agree.
My late and great teacher, Heather Slade-Lipkin, always stressed the need for ‘memory points’ when learning a piece. You’d mark them into the score – 1, 2, 3 etc – and often just practise them alone. It gave structure to the work you were learning and a safety net if you had a memory lapse; you’d just jump to the next memory point and carry on. Worked fantastically. Judging by the video, Rubinstein didn’t look too worried about his chances of getting out of his memory lapse alive. He’ probably have been more unsettled by Barenboim’s hairstyle.
Shamefully unprofessional.
A lot of Sunday pianists would be embarrassed.
He was hugely overrated.
Only professional if you fail to have a memory slip?
Pogorelich called him a dilettante. You can see why.
Sorry, it’s Pogorelich who’s the dilettante. Rubinstein was a concert performer for over 70 years, Pogorelich is a living-room pianist.
Regardless of what you think of Pogorelich, and I am not a fan of his, his performances were excellent from the technical aspect, thereby showing a level of professionalism that was absent from Rubenstein’s playing, who was, IMO, little more than a glorified Sunday pianist. He wouldn’t have got a foot in the door had he been born some fifty years later.
I saw him at the end of his carreer in Beaux-Arts (Belgium) and what I heard was far from perfect
So, you saw him “at the end of his” eighty year career as one of the greatest pianists: What exactly is your point?
In the picture underneath, Rubinstein shows the extent of the memory lapse, after the recital. According to the review the next day, he took it home in a taxi.
He was hugely overrated IMO.
He was the first famous pianist who played Chopin in a ‘classical’, straighforward way – expressive and lyrical, but no frills and gasping rubati, thereby showing the purity and clarity of the music. It was like a painting with the dirty varnish of exaggerating romanticism removed.
I heard Rubinstein suffer a similar memory lapse in (if memory serves) a Chopin Nocturne during a recital in Dallas in 1972. He improvised a bit trying to find his way back, then gave up, completely stopped playing, looked at the audience, smiled and shrugged, and simply started over. He had no trouble the second time through. A wonderful and memorable moment.
I would occasionally ask a talented student who knew a work securely from memory to suddenly take a wrong turn and see if they could work their way out of it. Sounds perverse but a good training for what will inevitably happen on stage from time to time. My dear old teacher, Henryk Mierowski, one time pupil of Ignaz Friedman was a wonderful pianist. – when on form. But he was bedevilled by memory problems. ‘The Times’ once wrote after a somewhat variable Wigmore Hall recital; ‘Mr Mierowski forgot so often and in so many pieces that one began to wonder whether he could remember which piece he’d forgotten.’ Incidentally I only heard Rubinstein live once – Odeon Cinema, Hendon. Little stays in the memory apart from him getting into a real mess in Chopin’s 3rd Ballade – a work he’d probably played thousands of times.
A work he may have played thousands of times, yet he had to fake his way through part of it in his studio recording.
(The C# minor section).
Total nonsense.
One of the famous memory lapses happened to Stravinsky on a concert in the thirties when he played the solo part of his own piano concerto. At the beginning of the 2nd mvt, which begins with the piano, he had no idea how it went – playing ‘from memory’ – and had to ask the conductor who hummed the melody. Then it dawned on him and could he start.
I have heard memory lapses from many violinists, including some of the famous ones, and invariably it is in standard repertoire. None of them however made something up to cover it up, although one said “SHIT!” loudly enough for all to hear (in the Mendelssohn Concerto, which he probably could play in his sleep and, just maybe, that day, was).
That Moscow audience probably had an unnaturally high percentage of audience members who immediately noticed the improvisation. Many, many “normal” listeners would never notice what Rubenstein did.
I’ve had quite some memory lapses but I can’t remember them.
Sally
All this bashing of one of the greatest pianists ever is terrible. Just a sign of our flawed times. NO pianist in history ever played perfectly in concert all the time. The greatest have had problems occasionally. Maurizio Pollini played Schoenberg flawlessly in the first part of a recital, then had a memory lapse in the Beethoven “Waldstein” sonata. I consider him to be one of the most “perfect” pianists ever, like him or not. I heard Rubinstein’s last recital in NY in 1976. He was 89, there were no memory slips.
Pollini is a control freak, which you can see in his facial expression while playing even the most simple music. Playing seemed to be for him like being tortured by the Spanish inquisition.
I once heard a story about a similar situation involving a famous cellist and a Bach suite, but I don’t recall the cellist now. Anybody know?
Another memory lapse.
Keeping calm and covering lapse with believable alternative is superb. He would fool many judges in any piano completion.. Bravo King Arthur !
He would only fool listeners with cloth ears.
He would never have made it had he been born several decades later.
They say people only go to these things to see the pianists crash.
Debussy once wrote in a review that he often had the impression that, at a piano recital, the audience expected the pianist to take the instrument up with his teeth.
My teacher told me once, “swim like your life depends on it. Just get back to shore. It happens to EVERYONE”. Then he regaled me with stories of his own and others he witnessed. He added, “Performance is a live art and pianists always had improvisation as one of their bag of tricks.” Rubinstein remains wonderfully composed and brilliantly continues. A great lesson for any performer.
He was 75 years old when this happened; an age that most people never reach. Cut him a break, please, he was one of the all-time greats.
Correction: he was born in 1887 and was therefore some 78 years old then.