I bought this on the same day that I bought the record I wrote about yesterday. It is the same work, I know. The same work, but a different recording. I like the performance by the Beaux Arts Trio with Walter Trampler. Somehow I never could warm up to this one. It might be the recording, I’m always a bit sensitive to that. However, I do like the Schumann work. Both the performance and the recording are well done there. So I urge you to try that one, it is on the Spotify list I added. It is a playlist by someone, so I hope it will keep.
Arthur Rubinstein can be counted among the piano’s greatest performers. He was born in 1887 in Łódź in what was then the Russian part of Poland. He was called Leo, but never liked the name. His older brother said he should be called Artur, like the neighbour’s violin playing son. Because if you give the baby the name of someone with talent, maybe it starts to rub off.
And so it did, only not with the violin. For eight decades Arthur was playing the piano at the top level. He toured the world in the first decade of the twentieth century. Before the war he lived in Berlin, but after the First World War he vowed never to play in Germany again, because of the actions of Germany during that war. After the Second World War in 1946 he became an American citizen, after having lived in California during the war.