Rubinstein Matinee

“Those who were at Steinway Hall on Saturday last—and there were many there—enjoyed a musical treat such as is seldom vouchsafed to an audience nowadays. The great pianist, whose visit to America constitutes an epoch in our musical history, took leave of New York on that occasion, for a short time at least. His playing partakes of the nature of an art revelation, and the effect he has produced upon the mind of the musical public is likely to result in a healthier feeling and appreciation of all that is great and grand in music. We have had the best and purest that Europe could boast of, but never before such a surpassing genius as Rubinstein. Those who scoffed at first at the idea of a pianist who discarded the small weaknesses of his brethren and was so completely absorbed in his art as to forget the necessity of pandering to sensationalism have changed their opinions, in view of the significant attention paid by the public to his concerts. The representative local pianists came literally to his feet (for they occupied the first row of seats in the hall at each concert) to learn from him what was truly great in music and to [illegible] inspiration from this modern Moses on the [illegible] whose communings have been in the regions of sublimity, whose ideas have been con-[illegible line] and whose influence will be lasting and [illegible line]. …Saturday received a new creation in the light of his wonderful playing. This was an étude of Chopin, opus 25, one of those Titanic efforts of the poet (the Homer and Tennyson of music) that lifts the instrument above all its fellows. If there be a fault in the playing of Rubinstein it is in his impetuosity, which carries him away as on the wings of the hurricane. In the étude the enormous difficulties of execution with which it abounds were lost in the lightening-like sweep of the pianist’s rendition, and those who know the work well looked at each other in blank astonishment at such an evidence of genius. There were iridescent gleams of light in the chorded passages that his fingers called into life, and a tenderness infused into even the stormy phrases that colored them with beauty as the sunbeams gliding the edges of a dark cloud. With him is associated the most accomplished violinist that has ever been heard in this country. At the last concert Wieniawski carried away his hearers in a storm of enthusiasm by his magnificent rendering of Ernst’s variations on ‘Il Pirata.’”