After a prolonged absence Rubinstein returned to Russia in 1964, gave one of his greatest recitals, and set musical Moscow by the ears. The intention is unmistakable in every blazing and heroic bar. Dazzled and, possibly, chastened (which of even their finest pianists could hope to match such glory, such poetic liberation in Chopin?) the Russians listened in awe to the confirmation of a legend.
Here is the pianist who changed the parameters of Chopin for ever, freeing him of all neurosis and salon sentimentality and sending his spirit soaring with an overwhelming force and fantasy. Beckmessers will, of course, note how, in the heat of the moment (and the temperature is white-hot), assorted piano and pianissimo markings turn into fortissimos, and eyebrows will also be raised over a wrong turning that wreaks momentary havoc with the Scherzo from the Second Sonata. Then there is the way the A flat Polonaise’s central equestrian gallop is launched with a blistering inaccuracy. Yet such things are somehow part and parcel of the total experience and it is difficult to imagine this recital without them. Even a hint of playing or recording for safety and the overwhelming intensity would have been lost. As it is, the Second Sonata’s opening Grave and doppio movimento become virtually one and the same thing, and who but Rubinstein could declaim the climax of the first movement’s development with such rhetorical defiance? In the second movement, too, where Chopin hurls blocks of sound in all directions simultaneously, Rubinstein creates a true Mephisto scherzo.
But it is in Chopin’s more intimate and confiding pages in, say, the D flat Nocturne or A minor Waltz that Rubinstein shows his most aristocratic and cardinal quality. Here, pulse and vocal ‘line’ never fail, yet the fluctuations within that pulse are like some infinite and sophisticated poetic play. Such charisma is, perhaps, more familiar to great singers than pianists (lovers of Maria Callas at her height will know what I mean) and, again, in the Barcarolle – Chopin’s most elusive masterpiece – Rubinstein’s largesse, his supreme generosity of spirit, illuminates every bar. Encores include the A flat Waltz, Op. 34 No. 1, its ballroom virtuosity re-created with a unique mix of urbanity and aplomb.
Rubinstein could play the aristocrat to the hilt, but he was also a force of nature transcending all carefully prescribed notions of neatness, musical taste or decorum. To a greater extent than any other pianist he set Chopin’s turbulent genius free to charm and intimidate, to sing and resonate across the universe.'