Tchaikovsky: Piano Concerto No.1 / Schumann: Piano Concerto in A minor

by James Leonard After listening to Artur Rubinstein's live recording of Tchaikovsky's Piano Concerto in B flat minor from May 16, 1961, one is left with a single question: how did Rubinstein fool so many people into believing he was a great pianist for so long? Listen just to the opening Allegro no troppo e molto maestoso: Rubinstein fumbles the chords, slips in the octaves, slides in the double octaves, and simply cannot handle the notes on the page, much less breathe life into them. The only feeling one gets from his performance is that of vertigo, the sense that anything can go wrong because it usually does. Nor does the performance get any better from there: Carlo Maria Giulini is usually the most accommodating of accompanists, but even he cannot make Rubinstein and the Philharmonia Orchestra actually come in together on big downbeats. But after listening to Artur Rubinstein's live recording of Schumann'sConcerto in A minor with Rudolf Schwartz conducting the BBC Symphony from November 27, 1957, one begins to understand how Rubinstein could fool so many people. Just listen to the central Intermezzo: Rubinstein does have a pretty tone and he does sustain the line from start to finish. While this is not great piano playing -- listen to any recording of the work by Richter, Michelangeli, Moravec, Zimmerman, or Argerich for great piano playing -- it does have the illusion of great piano playing and that illusion would be enough to fool enough of the people enough of the time. BBC's sound is small, drab, gray, and honest.