HOWARD HANNAY
MUSIC
MR. ARTHUR RUBINSTEIN'S RECITAL
DURING the last few months the Wigmore Hall has been the scene of some very notable recitals given by pianists of the first rank. They had several interesting points in common. Their audiences consisted largely of professional musicians, their programmes were generally of a severe and far from popular type. Yet in spite of the somewhat exclusive character of both programmes and audiences, so well adapted, one might think, to the intimate atmosphere of a small hall, intimacy was exactly the quality that in all cases was entirely absent from the performances. Both with Busoni and Cortôt, and lastly with Mr. Arthur Rubinstein, it was impossible to avoid feeling that one was at much too close quarters. The difference between such players as these and the more intimate type of pianist is moral rather than physical. Some players give the impression that they are playing for themselves alone, and that it is by mere accident that we happen to overhear them; the others seem almost to assume that their audience will not listen to them unless its attention is gripped and consciously dominated by the overmastering compulsion of a powerful personality. If we are soothed and charmed by the intimate players, we may indeed be uplifted and transported by the men of might, but there is at the same time the chance that we may be crushed and exhausted.
Mr. Arthur Rubinstein is certainly to be counted among the great pianists, but not yet among the greatest. He is a player of outstanding ability, but not of outstanding personality. He lacks Cortôt's inspiring animation, and, still more, the monumental intellectuality of Busoni. A conventional programme, or an almost conventional one, was the index of an almost conventional mind. The usual Bach-Somebody, the usual heavy Chopin; no Beethoven (thank goodness!), some modern French and Spanish, a Liszt Rhapsody to end up with. What saved the programme were the Spanish pieces and Liszt's Funérailles. If Mr. Rubinstein had had the courage to offer a programme as individual as those of Busoni he might have given himself a better chance of asserting his own individuality.
To begin with the two extremes: the Bach transcription at the beginning and the Liszt Rhapsody at the end are long out of date. Liszt's arrangements of Bach's organ works may have been very wonderful fifty years ago or more when there were not many organs in England on which the originals could be played, even if there were the organists to play them. To-day they are familiar to all of us. Moreover, the modern big pianists play them too easily. They seek to reproduce, as far as they can, the effect of the organ, and sometimes achieve a very remarkable uniformity of tone, as faultlessly regular as any given row of pipes can produce. But this uniformity of the organ's tone-colour is just the obvious deficiency of that instrument, and the exact reproduction of it on the pianoforte very easily tends to reproduce no more than the relentless accuracy of the mechanical piano-player. Mr. Rubinstein played his Bach-Liszt with intelligence and skill, and even succeeded in suggesting a certain organ-like effect of sonority by means of an ingenious method of pedalling; but in these days we should prefer either a more astounding miracle of transcription or, still better, the direct simplicity of Bach unadorned. Again, if it is still necessary to end a recital with a display of fireworks there are surely more showy things available now than Liszt's Hungarian Rhapsodies; and if we want Liszt for his own musical thoughts, we want something that represents him in a more serious mood. For the Funérailles Mr. Rubinstein deserves sincere gratitude.
Liszt's Hungary is only less difficult to believe in than Chopin's Poland. It is true that Hungary exists, and true that in Hungarian cafés one may still hear the tunes which Liszt embellished, but such underlying truth as the Rhapsodies possess is completely disguised by their tawdry romantic theatricality. As for Poland, "if she had not existed, it would have been necessary to invent her," for Paris of the eighteen-thirties. That Poland, populated entirely by devout and amorous aristocrats, is the musician's Mrs. Harris—no, his Countess Harricka. Certainly the robust vigour of Mr. Rubinstein's playing make short work of the languor and swagger of the Scherzo in B flat minor and the Polonaise in A flat. All pianists are expected to play Chopin; but there are not many works of Chopin that will stand the strain of interpretation in the modern virtuoso's manner. The Barcarole is one of the few which by virtue of its serene and classical beauty has still been able to survive it.