Anton Rubinstein, Piano Concerto No 4

The pianist who succeeded Liszt in the line of greatness was called Anton Grigorievich Rubinstein, a Russian bear with enormous hands who, with his luxuriant hair and broad forehead in the Beethoven style, dazzled the audience, especially the ladies, in the second half of the 19th century. At sixteen he had played for Liszt but the Hungarian master did not take him as a pupil. Perhaps their personalities clashed. Liszt is said to have dismissed him with good advice: "A talented man should reach his goal by his own efforts, without any help". No other brilliant pupil is known to have been rejected by the master.

Anton Rubinstein (1829 - 1894)

His career

Born in 1829 in a village northwest of Odessa, he made his debut at the age of nine. Soon his teacher took him to Paris where he dazzled as a child prodigy. But he was not the only one. As he would later recount in his autobiography, child prodigies were all the rage throughout Europe in the 1840s.

Later it was Berlin, then Vienna. In 1872-73 he made a professionally and financially successful tour of the United States. Ten years earlier he had participated in the founding of the St. Petersburg Conservatory, of which he was the first director (his younger brother, Nikolai, another piano virtuoso, founded the Moscow Conservatory in 1866).

The Legacy

At the end of his life, his enormous repertoire was weakened, but he still continued with his famous "historical recitals", in which during seven recitals he covered the entire history of Western music. Like every professional pianist of the 19th century, he was also a prolific composer. His legacy is extensive, although much of it has been forgotten. There are twenty operas, six symphonies, chamber music, and innumerable pieces for solo piano. Of his five concertos for piano and orchestra, only one survives, the Concerto in D minor, still hailed today, and an integral part of the standard repertoire, at least in Russia.

Concerto for Piano and Orchestra No. 4 in D minor, opus 70

Perhaps a masterpiece of the 19th-century repertoire, it was composed in 1864 and published two years later, together with an arrangement for two pianos. And it is not difficult to understand the success it enjoyed in its time (what is hard to understand is that it has lost it). His writing is colorful and at times dazzling. Of great melodic and harmonic appeal, it also displays a highly imaginative orchestration. 

Movements

The three typical ones of the period (although they were not so typical anymore - apart from the fact that the first movement is "somewhat moderate", and not overtly fast):

00:00  Moderato assai

11:31  Andante

22:18  Allegro

The rendition is by pianist Age Juurikas, from Estonia, accompanied by the Estonian National Symphony Orchestra, conducted by the Estonian maestro Neeme Järvi.