Anton Rubinstein had an innate musical sense, which was well directed by his mother. After a few years of teaching, he moved to Europe where he came into contact with Liszt, Mendelssohn, and Siegfried Demme, studying musical composition.
In those years he stood out as a soloist and gave concerts in Holland, England, Sweden and Germany. After returning to his homeland, he began an extensive production of operas, symphonies, concerts and variety works and founded the St. Petersburg Conservatory in 1862., the first institution of musical education in Russia, organized on the models of Western conservatories. The same example was followed by his brother Nicholas who founded the Moscow Conservatory in 1866.
Anton Rubinstein was one of the best pianists of his time, and for his instrument he composed five concertos and several solo pieces, In addition to sonatas for violin and cello, five trios, ten quartets, two quintets, cello concertos, ten secular operas, three religious operas, six symphonies, and a total of 125 melodies, among which Persian songs stand out for their beauty. and music.
The compositions of Anton Rubinstein, written in a conservative German style, resemble the works of Mendelssohn, Weber and Schubert. He did not fully accept the emerging Russian national school headed by Balakirev, Borodin, Mussorgsky, Cui and Rimsky-Korsakov. And although his works were very popular during his lifetime, after his death they soon disappeared from the scene.
Although Anton Rubinstein gained more fame as a pianist and conductor than as a composer, He left behind an impressive body of work that covered all the major genres and within them are three symphonic poems that give musical expression to literary themes such as Ivan the Terrible, Faust s Don Quixote.
Almost thirty years before Richard Strauss’ famous symphonic poem about the adventures of the so-called knight Don Quixote, Rubinstein took the same theme from Miguel Cervantes (written between 1605 and 1615) and composed his Humoresca for orchestra Op.87 ‘Don Quixote’. In addition to the original version, he rearranged for two pianos.
As we said earlier, Anton Rubinstein had an important influence on the Russian musical life of his time as a composer, pianist and musical animator. But despite this work, his extensive work by the way, Critics warn of a lack of depth and consistency, not excluding that some of them contain passages of intimate tenderness and tender grace.
Today he is a forgotten musician, except perhaps for his country. It seems incredible given the great popularity it has and the pedagogical work that has been done. Hear some of his tracks on our Music of the Week show, Next Monday, November 21st from 3:00 p.m by
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