Rubinstein, Anton

Anton Rubinstein – First Piano Concerto in E Minor, Op. 25

(b. Podolia, Russia, 28 November 1829 – d. Peterhof, Saint Petersburg, 20 November 1894)

Preface

Anton Grigorievich Rubinstein was a towering figure in 19th-century Russian music. As a pianist, conductor, composer, and educator, he was one of the most internationally recognized Russian musicians of his time and the founder of the St. Petersburg Conservatory. A prolific composer, Rubinstein left behind over 200 works: fourteen operas, a ballet, six symphonies, four overtures, five piano concertos, two cello concertos, a violin concerto, numerous choral works, oratorios, cantatas, sonatas, and over a hundred songs and romances.

Though strongly influenced by German Romanticism, Rubinstein maintained a powerful connection to Russian musical traditions, themes, and imagery. He is widely credited with laying the foundation for the Russian piano concerto as a genre. In fact, his violin concerto was the first major example of the concerto form in Russian music. Rubinstein did not place opera or vocal music at the top of the musical hierarchy—he regarded instrumental music as the highest manifestation of musical art.

Rubinstein’s frequent return to the piano concerto genre stemmed naturally from his multifaceted career. He was a quintessential cosmopolitan artist—or, as the writer Alexander Amfiteatrov put it, “a typical man of the ‘window to Europe’: a resident of St. Petersburg and a traveller abroad.” In the 1880s, Rubinstein moved away from his full-length solo recitals and frequently appeared in mixed concerts, performing with orchestra and in chamber ensembles. All his piano concertos were written between the 1850s and 1870s, falling into two chronological groups: early works from the late 1840s and early 1850s, and later concertos, from the Third (1854) through the Fifth (1874). …

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