Frederic CHOPIN (1810 – 1849)
Piano Concerto No.2 in F minor, Op.21
Polonaise No.6 in A flat major Op.53
Arthur Rubinstein (piano)
Israel Philharmonic Orchestra/Zubin Mehta
rec. live, Royal Festival Hall, London, 9 June 1968
Bonus: Rubinstein in Conversation with Bernard Levin. BBC Omnibus,
1 December 1968 [51:00]
Picture NTSC/4:3 B&W; Sound PCM Mono; Languages E, D, F; Region 0 (worldwide)
IDÉALE AUDIENCE DVD 3079638 [91:00]
This black and white footage comes from a concert at London’s Royal Festival
Hall given during a tour by the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra to celebrate
the twentieth anniversary of its formation. The audience is bedecked in finery,
the men largely in bow ties, the women in furs, very ostentatious jewellery
and elegant dresses.
The orchestra was directed by Zubin Mehta and the guest soloist was Arthur
Rubinstein in Chopin’s F minor Concerto, which is all we see of the concert,
this being a Rubinstein release. We are not told, but it’s possible, that
the rest of the concert was not filmed by the BBC. It was, in fact, often
the case that only one work was filmed.
Mehta’s beat is strict and military. He looks moody, and like a young Leonard
Bernstein – maybe he was modelling the Bernsteinian quiff. Rubinstein remains
snowy-headed and taciturn. His pianism is elegant, relaxed, unshowy and beautifully
controlled. Several camera angles cover the stage, allowing one access to
the keyboard as well as to a ‘front-on’ view of the musicians and these camera
shots are apposite, and sensitively accomplished. There’s applause at the
end of the first movement. At this time the orchestra sported some highly
identifiable and distinctive wind players – the clarinets, the bassoon in
particular – but though they are constantly in motion, Rubinstein is a study
in facial passivity, in much the same way as was Benno Moiseiwitsch.
Maybe the clarinets are a touch flat in the finale but the music is still
richly characterised, and there’s plenty of colour and vivacity. I watched
Uchida in a filmed concert last night, and her moth-like fluttering is so
at odds with the dignity of Rubinstein that they might as well be espousing
different professions. He plays as an encore the A flat major Polonaise, with
characteristic élan and drama. To watch Rubinstein in concert in this way,
in so canonic a repertoire as this, is a privilege.
The second part of the DVD is a filmed interview between Rubinstein and the
young Bernard Levin, from an Omnibus TV programme of 1 December 1968. The
conversation lasts 51 minutes, and the music portion 40, so you will appreciate
that there is more talk than play in this release. But Rubinstein is no less
fascinating as a talker than as a musician, or only marginally less so, and
I found this segment unmissable. He addresses the question of his date of
birth – 1887 or 1889 - with a tall-tale sounding anecdote about evasion of
military service. He reminds us that Joachim acted as a surrogate protectorate,
forbidding wunderkind exploitation, that he later became London’s ‘Society
Pianist’ in the frivolous teens of the century – or that, at least, was how
it looked to an outsider. We hear of his love of sport and films, of his playboy
reputation, his disdain for ‘tradition’. And then there are his aperçu; the
‘classicism’ of Chopin, the best audiences always being women; how connoisseurs
at concerts are nothing less than ‘detectives’. Throughout, Levin is wide-eyed,
sometimes gauche, and even oddly shallow. That’s not how I remember him, so
maybe he was overawed.
Production values here are strong. This Rubinstein film is, for me, unmissable.
Jonathan Woolf
This Rubinstein film is, for me, unmissable.