Rubinstein, Anton Grigoryevich

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Rubinstein’s father opened a pencil factory in Moscow. His mother, 
a competent musician, began giving Anton piano lessons at five. He 
apparently progressed rapidly. Within a year and a half Alexander 
Villoing, Moscow’s leading piano teacher at the time, heard and 
accepted Rubinstein as a non-paying student. Rubinstein made his first 
public appearance at a charity benefit concert, in Moscow’s Petrovsky 
Park at the age of nine. Anton and Nikolai, his brother, went to 
St. Petersburg to play for Czar Nicholas I and the Imperial family at the 
Winter Palace. Anton was fourteen years old; Nikolai was eight.
In spring 1844, Rubinstein, Nikolai, his mother and his sister Luba 
travelled to Berlin. Here he met with, and was supported by, Felix 
Mendelssohn and Giacomo Meyerbeer. Rubinstein grew up to be a 
highly cultured, widely-read artist. He was fluent in Russian, German, 
French and English and could read Italian and Spanish literature. The 
Revolution of 1848 forced Rubinstein back to Russia. Spending the next 
five years mainly in St. Petersburg, Rubinstein taught, gave concerts and 
performed frequently at the Imperial court. The Grand Duchess Elena 
Pavlovna, sister to Czar Nicholas I, became his most devoted patroness. 
By 1852, he had become a leading figure in St. Petersburg’s musical life, 
performing as a soloist and collaborating with some of the outstanding 
instrumentalists and vocalists who came to the Russian capital.
The opening of the St. Petersburg Conservatoire, the first music 
school in Russia and an outgrowth of the RMS (Russian Musical Society), 
followed in 1862. Rubinstein not only founded it and was its first director 
but also recruited an imposing pool of talent for its faculty.
Some in Russian society were surprised that a Russian music school 
would actually attempt to be Russian. One “fashionable lady”, when told 
by Rubinstein that classes would be taught in Russian and not a foreign 
language, exclaimed, “What, music in Russian! That is an original idea!” 
Rubinstein adds, “And surely it was surprising that the theory of Music 
was to be taught for the first time in the Russian language at our 
Conservatoire... Hitherto, if anyone wished to study it, he was obliged 
to take lessons from a foreigner, or to go to Germany.”
All his life Rubinstein continued to make tours as a pianist and give 
appearances as a conductor.
Rubinstein also coached a few pianists and taught his only private 
piano student, Josef Hofmann. Hofmann would become one of the finest 
keyboard artists of the 20th century.
Rubinstein settled in Germany but returned to Russia occasionally to 
visit friends and family. He gave his final concert in St. Petersburg on 

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January 14, 1894. With his health failing rapidly, Rubinstein died on 
November 28 of that year, having suffered from heart disease for some 
time.
Many of Rubinstein’s contemporaries felt he bore a striking resemblance 
to Ludwig van Beethoven. Ignaz Moscheles, who had known Beethoven 
intimately, wrote, “Rubinstein’s features and short, irrepressible hair remind 
me of Beethoven.” Liszt referred to Rubinstein as “Van II”. Rubinstein was 
even rumoured to be the illegitimate son of Beethoven. Rubinstein neither 
confirmed nor denied this rumour. Neither did he remind anyone that he 
was born more than two years after Beethoven had died.
This resemblance to Beethoven was also felt to be in Rubinstein’s 
keyboard playing. Under his hands, it was said, the piano erupted 
volcanically. Audience members wrote of going home limp after one of 
his recitals, knowing they had witnessed a force of nature. Among his 
best known works are the opera The Demon, his Piano Concerto No. 4, 
and his Symphony No. 2 known as The Ocean.

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