Rubinstein Concert: 2nd

Event Information

Venue(s):
Steinway Hall

Manager / Director:
Maurice Grau

Conductor(s):
Carl Bergmann

Price: $1.50; $2-3 reserved seat; $1 gallery

Record Information

Status:
Published

Last Updated:
5 October 2024

Performance Date(s) and Time(s)

25 Sep 1872, 8:00 PM

Performers and/or Works Performed

2)
Composer(s): Wagner
3)
Composer(s): Beethoven
Participants:  Anton Rubinstein
4)
Composer(s): Abt
Participants:  Louise Liebhart
6)
aka Soirees musicales. Gita in gondola
Composer(s): Rossini
Participants:  Anton Rubinstein
7)
Composer(s): Schubert
Participants:  Anton Rubinstein
8)
aka Erlkonig
Composer(s): Schubert
Participants:  Anton Rubinstein
10)
aka Carneval; Scenes mignonnes sur quatre notes
Composer(s): Schumann
Participants:  Anton Rubinstein
11)
Composer(s): Baumann
12)
Composer(s): Vieuxtemps
Participants:  Henryk Wieniawski
13)
Composer(s): Rubinstein
Participants:  Anton Rubinstein
14)
Composer(s): Rubinstein
Participants:  Anton Rubinstein
15)
Composer(s): Rubinstein
Participants:  Anton Rubinstein

Citations

1)
Advertisement: New-York Times, 22 September 1872, 7.
2)
Review: New-York Daily Tribune, 26 September 1872, 5.

“The second Rubinstein concert last night drew an audience as large and excitable as the first. The selections as before were chosen with a few exceptions from the best sources, and the principal artists made no concessions to a vulgar taste. The following was the programme [see above]. 

In the Beethoven concerto Herr Rubinstein introduced his own rich and striking cadenzas. Colored strongly as they were with his own individuality, they were not out of keeping with the spirit of the concerto, at least as he interprets it. But his interpretation is very different from anything we have ever heard before. He plays Beethoven with more freedom and vigor than other performers venture to display in the presence of the greatest of composers, and yet with the reverence and sympathy which we look for in the genuine artist. It is Beethoven in a fresher dress than the master is wont to wear; yet the familiar form and features are there, and we know not why the new dress may not be better than the old. A great deal of Rubinstein’s characteristic delicacy and versatility, his airy fancy and light and graceful touch, the exquisite art of his soft passages, and the inimitable refinement of his cantabile playing, appeared in the shorter pieces such as Rossini’s ‘Gita in Gondola’ and his own Romanza; but it was in Schumann’s ‘Carnival’ (scene mignonnes) that the magnificence of his style and technique and the grandeur of his spirit really showed themselves. He entered perfectly into all the changing moods of that fantastic composition, and gave the Davidsbundler march with a superb force and richness which the audience greeted with loud shouts of delight.

Herr Wieniawski was perhaps less perfectly suited with his selections than on the first night; but the warmth of his reception was, if anything, greater than before. Both his pieces display the perfection of his tone and technique, and exhibit some difficult niceties of his execution even better than the Mendelssohn concerto which he played on Monday; but they are not so well adapted as the latter composition for the utterance of fine feeling. Still everything that he touches takes on a tender grace which few living players have learned to express, and even the mechanical perfection of his playing is something beautiful and inspiriting.”

3)
Review: New-York Times, 26 September 1872, 5.

“The second of the Rubinstein concerts was given at Steinway Hall, last evening. It attracted an overwhelming audience, and its progress was marked by demonstrations of delight even more unanimous and prolonged than those which distinguished the earliest entertainment of the series. The genius and talent of Mr. Rubinstein need no commentary. From the first note sounded on the instrument with a touch now as mighty as a giant’s, now as light as a Summer breeze, and always decided and elastic as no other pianist’s; from the first phrase, replete with expressiveness and full of color, whether long or brief, the sensibility, the taste, and the marvelous technique of the performer are clear. For a less-gifted executant yesterday’s programme would not have been so advantageous as Monday’s. But the variety of Mr. Rubinstein’s art would assert itself in a composition of the smallest compass. The pianist’s recital of Schumann’s ‘Carnival’—which we shall not care to hear again under other hands—was a summary of all styles, and the most convincing testimony as to the scope of his method that could be desired. Mr. Rubinstein was recalled three or four times after he had rendered this composition. Previous to its rehearsal, a masterly delivery of Beethoven’s concerto in G, with cadenzas in the purest Beethoven spirit, written by the executant, and a rendering of Liszt’s transcription of Schubert’s ‘Erl König’—an exceedingly dramatic effort, instinct with the spirit of the well-known song—had elicited immense applause. A study in C major, in which the dash and vigor of Mr. Rubinstein’s delivery actually amazed the audience, (which, in the language of Kean, rose at him.) ended his share—the lion’s share, be it remarked—of the entertainment. Mr. Wieniawski, probably because he had set himself a less classical task than on the occasion of his first appearance, produced an impression more profound, if anything, than his playing wrought on Monday. The beauty of his tone, the breadth of his bowing, the wondrous perfection of his passages in staccato, and the charm of his expression were conspicuous to the listener least versed in the mysteries of the violinist’s lore. Mr. Wieniawski interpreted a fine fantasia by himself on themes from Gounod’s ‘Faust;’ an air and variations by Vieuxtemps, in the course of which a succession of notes in staccato done with an ‘up bow’and a ‘down bow’ awakened a desire to applaud, which not even the continuance of the artist’s work could quite restrain; and a short tune, which was supplied in deference to a demand for a supplement to the announced labors of the gentleman too persistent to be disregarded. The vocal artists were, as on Monday, Mlles. Liebhart and Ormény, concerning whom the opinions already set forth in this place are likely to hold good for some time. The orchestra is not so proficient as the importance of the Rubinstein concerts suggest it should be. The brass instruments were unsteady yesterday, and portions of the overture to ‘Rienzi’ were very clumsily handled.”

4)
Review: New York Post, 26 September 1872, 2.

“The second appearance of Anton Rubinstein in this country called forth a large and sympathetic audience, at whose hands the great pianist received many enthusiastic tokens of approval and admiration. His playing confirmed us in our first impression of the superiority of his execution and the greatness of his genius. In Beethoven’s Concerto in G major, with cadenzas by himself, he showed himself to be of kindred mind with the great German, while in Schumann’s ‘Carnival’ he exhibited a versatility, a power, both of expression and repression, and a delicacy and precision of touch which carried the audience by storm. The third selection of the evening, made up from the compositions of Rossini and Liszt, was perhaps the most enchanting part of the programme, the 

Erl König,’ in particular, being rendered with wonderful fidelity and power. Wieniawski gained in the popular estimation last evening, which was due perhaps to the fact that his perfect ease of manner serves in a measure to conceal his great skill in the use of the violin. His fantasia, on themes from ‘Faust,’ showed new beauties in the familiar airs, while in Vieuxtemps’s Air Varie he exhibited the marvelous powers of the violin with an ease and an abandon which won an instantaneous approval. 

Mlles. Liebhart and Ormeny sang both alone and in duet; the Kukuk song of Mlle. Liebhart, composed for her by Herr Abt, being remarkably pretty and effective.”

5)
Review: New York Herald, 26 September 1872, 6.

“There was another triumph of genius at Steinway Hall last night. A well-filled house, deeply attentive, eager and enthusiastic, greeted the second appearance of the greatest pianist and the most accomplished violinist ever heard in America. Hundreds of artists of every kind were there, eager to catch inspiration from those kings of music and to learn more about than ever they dreamed of before. The programme had the same fault as its predecessor, though not to the same extent—it was too long. The principal share of the work fell on the shoulders of Rubinstein, and a truly gigantic task it was. The colossal G major concerto of Beethoven, with those two cadenzas composed by the pianist himself, enormous in their difficulty of execution, grand in their conception and forming almost a concerto within a concerto in their length; the fantastic ‘Gita in Gondola,’ by Rossini, fitful and dreamy as the sunny skies under which it first came into life; Liszt’s wonderful arrangement of the lovely melody of Schubert, ‘Auf dem Wasser zu Singen;’ the bouquet of infinitessimal melodies which Schumann calls a carnival; three of Rubinstein’s characteristic works—a romanza, a barcarolle in F minor and an étude in C major—and last, though not least, the magnificent setting of Schubert’s ‘Erl King,’ by Liszt.

The last we liked best. Every one knows the legend, ‘Wie reitet so spat, durch Nacht and Wind’—how the father hurried home in the darkness, clasping his darling boy to his breast; how the Erl King and his daughter wooed the child to go with them, and the lifeless form that lay in the father’s arms when home was reached. To interpret this on the piano, making each of the four characters stand forth in bold relief, individualizing mere tones, and causing them to express now the hurried, anxious accents of the father, the wild terror of the child, the stern, fear-inspiring voice of the spirit of the wood, and the seductive eloquence of the phantom daughter, may appear a superhuman work, but it was accomplished. Underneath these fitful changes of passion, tenderness, fear and anxiety, were heard the hurried, impetuous foot strokes of the horse bearing his precious burden, and the storm gusts that swept through the haunted wood. In the concerto a most remarkable and never-to-be forgotten number was the finale. The tempo in which it was played by Rubinstein was impetuous and grand, and the tones of the grand piano sprang forth like an army of genii at the bidding of a magician. The Carnival of Schumann might—out of regard for the pianist should—have been left out of the programme, as it was entirely too long, and the strain on his powers must have been terrible. To take a score of melodic waifs and give to each the light and shade of expression necessary to individualize it is a task that no other pianist that ever visited America could perform.

For Wieniawski we have but terms of praise to offer. He played a fantasia of his own, founded on themes from ‘Faust,’ introducing some of the most characteristic motifs of Gounod. The work is worthy of Spohr or Paganini in its vivid delineations of the three principal personages of Goethe’s creation—Faust, Marguerite and Mephisto. The longings of the dissatisfied philosopher came from the violin as clear and intelligible as if expressed in words; there was the true, demoniac spirit in the interpretation of the wild, drinking song of Mephisto; a delicious tidbit of sentiment from the garden scene, and a quaint, original treatment of the waltz in Kermesse. Not a note was there in the rendering indistinct or blurred, but each phrase of the work was reflected as in a mirror. In the second part of the programme the violinist gave an equally artistic picture of Vieuxtemps’ ‘Air Varié.’ The exquisite finish of his style, the gradations of expression and shading perceptible in his tone and the perfect ease of manner make Wieniawski a fit companion in concert to Rubinstein.

Mlle. Liebhart sang a cuckoo lied, by Abt, with brilliancy and expression, and Mlle. Ormeni did justice to the beautiful morceau from ‘Il Barbiere,’ ‘Una voce poco fa.’ Both ladies sang much better than on the occasion of their début, doubtless having acquired more confidence and ease.”

6)
Article: New York Sun, 27 September 1872, 2.

Interview with the pianist and Henri Wieniawski at the Clarendon Hotel.