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Rare video: Rubinstein tells Slava a Heifetz story

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norman lebrecht

July 19, 2014

(en francais, but you can get the gist from the last line).

Post by Meloclassic.

Comments

Meloclassic says:

July 19, 2014 at 5:00 pm

This one is even better: Le sucre du printemps – Revised version by Rostropovitch with Arthur Rubinstein, Mstislav Rostropovitch and Galina Vishnevskaya in Deauville, France (1980). See https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?v=677333975670606

Mark Stratford says:

July 19, 2014 at 9:23 pm

Funny where AR says that Heifetz had a voice sounding like he had a hot potato in his mouth 😉

Thanks for posting this !

ruben greenberg says:

July 20, 2014 at 6:01 am

If Rubinstein hadn’t been such a great pianist, he could have had quite a career as a stand-up comedian. Rostro’s French is hilarious too, but he’s not speaking such bad French in order to make people laugh here. His French never got any better than that either and he would only agree to speak it after he had had a few drinks in him. So much for the myth about musicians being good at languages!

M2N2K says:

July 20, 2014 at 8:09 am

And his English was just about the same as his French. In fact, the way he spoke them, the two languages sounded remarkably similar.

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Robert Fitzpatrick says:

July 20, 2014 at 8:03 am

Interesting to note that on album covers of the trio (available on e-bay), Rubinstein appears always to have top billing. Various search engines appear consistently to list the ensemble with “god” (aka Heifetz) first. Imagine the Beaux Arts Trio with Pressler in second place!

Regarding Slava’s French, he was always able to communicate and when relaxed, (not in public) he seemed rather fluent (if often flawed). A little lubrication did appear to help his command from time to time…