Arthur Rubinstein was a
seventh childgifted not only with the extraordinary talent we all listened to
but also with one of the totaller recalls which makes possible this easy,
expansive memoir of his years into World War I but also and especially a very
happy nature which makes itself manifest throughout. ... These are his 'young
years'resilient and outgoing and full of his musical, social and
romanticissimo activities.
Kirkus Reviews
My Young Years remains a classic autobiography in the grand manner.
Unlike the memoirs that now crowd the bookshelves, exercises in
self-administered therapy in which narcissistic narrators of no apparent
accomplishment whine ad nauseam about real or imagined angst, this is an
exuberant account of what Rubinstein calls, in his brief foreword, 'the
struggles, the mistakes, the adventures, and ... the miraculous beauty and
happiness of my young years.' His was a life lived to the full, with triumphs
and disappointments galore, and by the time he reached his 80s and began to
write this book, Rubinstein had such great stature that his story virtually
commanded readers' attention.
Jonathan Yardley, Washington
Post
***
Arthur Rubinstein was a
Polish American classical pianist who played in public for eight decades. He
received international acclaim for his performances of music written by a
variety of composers, and many regard him as the greatest Chopin interpreter of
his time. He was described by The New
York Times as one of the most gifted pianists of the twentieth century.
My Young Years is Rubinsteins book of personal recollections, providing a record of
his life and creative development from his childhood days in Poland to the
years of World War I. This edition contains 37 illustrations as well as a
foreword and an afterword from the author.
With his uncanny memory,
with his unsurpassed gift as raconteur, the adored maestro of the piano at last
tells the story of his lifethe adventures, the struggles, the amours, the
mishaps, and the triumphsfrom his birth in Lodz in a large, complex
Polish-Jewish family (they would have been happier if little Arthur had taken
to the much more distinguished violin), to his education among strangers in
musical Berlin, to his visit to Switzerland (to be displayed to the Great God
Paderewski), to the first concerts, the first (of many) loves, and the first
triumphant tours. By the close of the book, the world is deep in its first
Great War, and Arthur deep in his great careerperhaps the greatest, in music,
of our century.
Here, in photographic
detail (and with photographs, too), are the high points and low points of those
decades, bringing to life the whole social-musical milieu of a Europe where
only the patronage of great aristocrats and millionaire piano-makers could
launch a penniless musician; where an affair of the heart in Warsaw couldand
didlead to a duel; where the entrée to musical Paris was through a Proustian haut monde whose habitual luxuries
presented a life-hungry youth with constant temptations to extravagance.
Here are the placeseach
new city an adventurefrom Warsaw, Berlin, and Paris to St. Petersburg, Vienna,
Rome, London, New York (where Rubinstein awoke his first morning to find himself
front-page news for reasons far from musical), and Madrid. And here are the
people: Josef Hofmann, already adored in America; the young giant Chaliapin,
overflowing with animal vitality; the notorious critic Monsieur Willy and his
wife (in hair ribbons) Coletteshe teasingly urged the young pianist to
disaster his first time at roulette; the reputedly terrifying Saint-Saëns;
Stravinsky, Casals, Koussevitzky, Diaghilev, Picasso ... In story after
wonderful story Rubinstein brings us into the presence of the great, the near
great, the once-great, the teachers gentle or tyrannical, the family, the
fascinating circles of friends, who populated his Young Years.
Rubinsteins life and music
have been illuminated with a radiant energy, a magic that could have only
sprung from a gargantuan love of life. His bookbursting with anecdote,
information, opinion, with lifeis a
testament to that great gift.