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23 Anton Rubinstein’s Concert in Pressburg Neue Freie Presse, April 23, 1933 M. R. In 1885, a memorable concert took place in a city that was not yet called Bratislava .1 It was still the historic Pressburg where Empress Maria Theresia, before her wars with Frederick the Great, appeared before the Hungarian parliament pleading for help, and where the valiant Hungarians, in exuberant enthusiasm, broke into the heroic shout: “We shall die for our Queen.” It was in Pressburg that Johann Nepomuk Hummel was born in 1778, the man who—with his splendid Sonata in F-sharp Minor—thought himself worthy of a contest with Beethoven. Now, in the loyal city of his birth, a monument was to be erected to him, and Anton Rubinstein had agreed to contribute to it in a concert that would include his monumental piano playing. One ¤ne morning [in Vienna], my friend and guardian, Ludwig van Bösendorfer the Piano Mogul, as Bülow called him, asked me: “Would you like to go to Pressburg with me this afternoon? Rubinstein is going to play there for the Hummel monument, and (here his voice sank to a pianissimo whisper) Liszt is also going to be at the concert!” Overjoyed, I accepted and hurried home to rummage in the drawers of old desks until I found a letter of introduction addressed (in Cyrillic characters) “To Anton Grigor’evich Rubinstein” and signed “Ivan Turgenev.” I had met Turgenev, together with Saint-Saëns and Gounod, at the Paris home of that most musical of all singers, Mme. Pauline Viardot-Garcia, when I played for her as a so-called child prodigy and brought her the compliments of Franz Liszt.2 Armed with my letter of introduction and an overnight bag, I picked up Bösendorfer at his study on the Herrengasse and drove to the East Terminal, where we found Rubinstein in a ¤rst-class compartment. The titan of the piano greeted us with kindness and took some pains to make room for us in the compartment , which was virtually stuffed with admiring traveling companions. He then read with interest the letter from Turgenev (who had recently died), all the Fritz A. Kuttner’s “free translation” from the German was published as “The Night Rubinstein Played Bratislava” (Stereo Review, August 1971). while asking questions about my concerts in St. Petersburg and my studies with Liszt.From his subsequent remarks,I learned that he,of course,admitted Liszt’s enormous merits of technique, brilliance, and pianistic virtuosity, but conceded him less musical quality in general. In Pressburg Rubinstein was led in triumph by the Monument Committee to the Hotel Palugyai, while Bösendorfer and I stayed at the railway station to wait for Liszt, who was coming from Budapest. When the master put his snow-white head out of the compartment window and waved to us, Bösendorfer exclaimed enthusiastically: “Now comes the King!” And I, who had traveled with Rubinstein from Vienna to Pressburg, was now riding with Liszt, whose good will touched me as we drove from the station to his quarters. Re®ecting on Liszt’s conduct toward Rubinstein, I feel that it was an act of magni¤cent kindness and esprit de corps that he, at the age of seventy-three, undertook the four-hour trip from Budapest to Pressburg, spent the night in unfamiliar surroundings, and returned the following day to Budapest—he did all that to hear Rubinstein and to show his admiration. But not everybody seemed to feel likewise. I overheard two elderly gentlemen saying that Liszt would now hear, for once, a rival of equal or possibly even superior rank. But Liszt had merely to appear in the hall to be overwhelmed by hundreds of shouts of “Éljen” [Hungarian: Viva!] and enthusiastic cheers. After a short while, the evening’s lion, Anton the Great, stepped out on the stage, ®anked by six trusty musicians, for Hummel’s Septet was to open the evening . After this came Hummel’s Sonata for Four Hands, in which Rubinstein left the treble part to his boyhood friend Leschetizky while he limited himself to the bass. “Limited” is perhaps the wrong word, because here Rubinstein showed himself, even more clearly than in the preceding Septet, not just as the master, but rather as the despot of the music and the piano. Bösendorfer whispered to me uneasily, “Is there a treble part in the world that could hold its own against this ‘orchestral’ bass...

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