[78-L] Quotation of the century (the previous one): Artur Rubinstein

[David Lennick]

 From High Fidelity, July 1963. Artur Rubinstein on how musical tastes evolved 
in the United States.

"In those days....the Sonata would be Beethoven's 'Moonlight'. Sometimes, 
someone risked  the Chopin 'Funeral March' Sonata and everybody bowed tearfully 
to each other remembering Grandfather's funeral. As an encore there would be 
the Mendelssohn 'Spinning Song' or the Rachmaninoff Prelude....In the 1900s it 
was already well known and it was a tearful piece to hear. Every nice girl in a 
good family tried a hand at it--unsuccessfully, I must say. ...

The radio and gramophone have changed our approach to music in general. Take a 
man forty or fifty years ago who had a little sense of music in him. What was 
he exposed to? To some aunt's, sister's, or daughter's fiddling around on the 
piano, violin, or cello--more or less unbearably. His taste would have been 
formed by some teacher, probably an old maid, who might have gone through a 
school of music in Chicago or St. Louis or Baltimore. To get rid of her, they 
gave her a certificate and she settled down, let's say in a town in Arizona. 
There she would dominate the whole cultural community. She was the expert and 
would decide what was good or bad. You can imagine what standards were 
established. I saw hundreds of such towns when I was young, and all of them had 
a completely inadequate approach to music.

Well, now all that has changed. The sons of that same fellow can put on the 
radio or a record and have Toscanini, Serkin, Gilels, Casadesus--they hear a 
concerto of Beethoven, Mozart, Schumann, or Chopin performed as it should be. 
They may like this one or that one better, but the standard is terribly high. 
This has ruined all of those old maids. They are out of business. Now no artist 
can go to the provinces with the feeling, 'Oh, I'm playing, ha, in Oregon. I 
can just as well get drunk and play.' Not any more! You have to play exactly as 
you play in New York, Paris, and London."

----------------------

dl