Life
Born to Jewish parents in Moscow, where his father had just opened a small factory, Rubinstein showed talent at the keyboard early on. He studied piano first with his mother, and while the family was in Berlin between 1844 and 1846, he studied piano with Theodor Kullak and harmony and counterpoint with Siegfried Dehn; during this time both he and his brother Anton attracted the interest and support of Mendelssohn and Meyerbeer. When the family returned to Moscow, Nikolai studied with Alexander Villoing, who also toured with him. He studied medicine to avoid army conscription, graduating from Moscow University in 1855.
As a result of his playing, Rubinstein was welcomed in all the fashionable artistocratic houses in Moscow. He co-founded the Moscow branch of the Russian Musical Society in 1859 and the Moscow Conservatory in 1866 with Prince Nikolai Petrovitch Troubetzkoy, serving as director of the latter until his death in 1881. He hired Tchaikovsky, then newly graduated from the Saint Petersburg Conservatory, to teach harmony at Moscow Conservatory. He actively encouraged Tchaikovsky's creative effforts and performed his compositions. Rubinstein and Tchaikovsky had a well-known falling-out over the latter's First Piano Concerto, but Rubinstein later revised his position and became an ardent champion of the work. Rubinstein conducted the premiere of Tchaikovsky's opera Eugene Onegin in 1879. Tchaikovsky wrote his Piano Trio in A minor in Rubinstein's memory after he died from tuberculosis in Paris.
Rubinstein also conducted and performed music of the nationalistic music group "The Five" to a much greater degree than his brother. In 1869, when the group's leader, Mily Balakirev, was forced to resign as conductor of the St. Petersburg branch of the Russian Musical Society, Rubinstein gave Balakirev his support, playing at concerts of the Free Music School as Balakirev's guest. He also gave the first performance of Balakirev's piano work Islamey, the work for which he is best known today.
Read more about this topic: Nikolai Rubinstein
Famous quotes containing the word life:
“The principal thing children are taught by hearing these lullabies is respect. They are taught to respect certain things in life and certain people. By giving respect, they hope to gain self-respect and through self-respect, they gain the respect of others. Self-respect is one of the qualities my people stress and try to nurture, and one of the controls an Indian has as he grows up. Once you lose your self-respect, you just go down.”
—Henry Old Coyote (20th century)
“Just so hollow and ineffectual, for the most part, is our ordinary conversation. Surface meets surface. When our life ceases to be inward and private, conversation degenerates into mere gossip.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“Your Christians, whom one persecutes in vain, have something in them that surpasses the human. They lead a life of such innocence, that the heavens owe them some recognition: that they arise the stronger the more they are beaten down is hardly the result of common virtues.”
—Pierre Corneille (1606–1684)