director of the Moscow Conservatory and an equally old-fashioned academic,

if unfairly remembered for his criticisms of the early works of Tchaikovsky.)

Anton Rubinstein believed that all potential Russian composers ought to be
given better grounding in the essentials of musical languageup to this point
the great classical forms of European music, opera excluded, were almost nonexistent in Russia. It was Rubinstein who wrote the rst signicant body of Russian Sonatas (ten), Concertos (eight), Symphonies (six), and String Quartets
(ten), and whose very industry and competence were an inspiration to his compatriot brothers in composition.
What sort of a composer was Rubinstein? The only piece of his music that
could be said to have survived, at least in every domestic library, is a pretty but
relatively insignicant piano piece written in his seventeenth year. The instant
fame of the Melody in F would nearly eclipse the rest of Rubinsteins production
in the same way that Paderewskis Minuet in G and Rakhmaninovs C
minor
Prelude were to do some years later. But in this little piece of Rubinsteins we
can sense his interest in Mendelssohns Songs without Words, and he was to produce some hundreds of similar tries for piano, a good many of which are of
more than passing interest. He also composed operas (thirteen of them!) ranging from Russian legends to Jewish and Christian storiesonly one of which
has survived in the theater, and then only in Eastern Europe: The Demon. But
it is certainly interesting that Gustav Mahler once turned down Hugo Wolf s
opera Der Corregidor in order to prepare The Demon for the Vienna Opera, and
even a cursory glance shows that Tchaikovskys Eugene Onegin is heavily indebted to Rubinsteins work. Among Rubinsteins symphonies, the second (a
grand piece which started life with four movements but ended up with seven),
the Ocean Symphony was for a time very popular and merits a revival, along
with the more modestly proportioned but beautifully crafted and delightfully
idiosyncratic Fifth Symphony. Although Rubinstein was a cosmopolitan heavily
inuenced by Mendelssohn and Schumann, every now and then a bit of real
Russia breaks throughfor example, in songs like The Asra or Gold Rolls
Here before Me (wonderfully recorded by Chaliapin), in the delicate treatment
of a folk song in the last movement of the excellent piano quartet, and in the
explosive nale of the brilliant rst piano sonata.
Just because a composer is rather derrire-garde is no reason to dismiss him;
after the passage of time it no longer matters so much whether a piece is anachronistic. What counts is that, in its own terms, a work be consistent, interesting,
and inventive. There is a great deal of such music by Rubinstein which renders
his neglect shameful. Although those hoping for another Tchaikovsky in Rubinstein will be disappointed, it is clear that Tchaikovsky would have been a very
different composer without Rubinsteins example. (A case in point: the similarity of the introduction to the cadenza in the rst movement of Rubinsteins
Fourth Piano Concertohappily still in the repertoireand the same moment
in Tchaikovskys First, which appeared the following year, is scarcely likely to
have been accidental!)
In recent years there has been an upturn in Rubinsteins fortunes thanks to
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