The World at His Fingertips

By Christopher Porterfield

MY MANY YEARS by Arthur Rubinstein; Knopf; 600 pages; $16.95

Synopsis: In the first installment, music fans, our hero left his boyhood home in Poland to make his way as a pianistic prodigy. Life seemed a feast of caviar, sex and pampering by the fashionable names of European art and society. But precocity was not enough. He needed discipline to rise from idleness and a suicide attempt and gain "the necessary hold on my career." By 1917, when he was 30, he felt he was ready. Now on with the story.

In this concluding volume of one of the true-life romantic sagas of our time, Arthur Rubinstein conquers new continents, uncounted women and, seemingly, mortality itself. He pursues his improbable but triumphant course down to the present, when, at 93, retired from public performing, partially blind, he still reigns as a favorite of the gods, an ageless symbol of the unquenchable passion for the well-lived life. His wide-eyed narrative, dictated to an amanuensis, is diffuse and repetitive, often couched in a quaint, flowery style. But his gusto and warmth carry him through, as they have in so many technically flawed recitals. He succeeds in making his adventures almost as stirring to the reader as they are to him.

As in Rubinstein's first volume, My Young Years, the settings are international, the incidents colorful and the supporting cast spectacular. He has a night on the town with the Prince of Wales, whose spindly piano he inadvertently demolishes with one mighty chord. An actress in Greenwich Village cajoles him into playing by standing on her head, "exposing her bare secrets"; she turns out to be Tallulah Bankhead. In an audience with Mussolini, he feeds il Duce a line for a speech. He sits for Picasso, who sees him 24 different ways. Round the world he goes, bumping over the Alps in a cargo plane, hopping a banana boat in Panama, crossing Siberia on a dingy train. Wherever he stops, he is taken up by the wealthy and titled, and he embraces their patronage uncritically: he recalls not a single knave or bore among them.

He is as tireless in the bedroom as on the road or concert platform. His chief paramour in this volume is the sensuous Italian contralto Gabriella Besan-zoni. She and Rubinstein tour Latin America like a couple of gypsy children, piling up gold pesos under their bed as they go. Other liaisons are briefer: the demimondaine "Charlottavotte," whom he enjoys between the lifeboats on a crossing to South America; the American actress who is so enchanted by his playing that she offers herself to him for the night as a tribute; and many a French bourgeoise "who apparently needed a diversion from the routine of marital life." But at 45 Rubinstein marries Aniela Mlynarski, 23, the attractive daughter of a Polish conductor, and they set about having their four children. The playboy is transformed into the proud papa. Proud but sometimes perplexed: the first time Rubinstein's daughter Eva asks him to play something, he goes to the keyboard, deeply touched, only to find that she meant on the phonograph.

Incredible as it seems, at 50, with four decades of performing behind him, Rubinstein had yet to catch on in the U.S. Then he signs with a "fat and important-looking middle-aged gentleman" named Sol Hurok, and soon America too is at his feet. When World War II drives him from his Paris home, he settles for a few years in Hollywood. There he earns huge fees for dubbing the sound track of films like Song of Love, buys a Cadillac and plunges into the party circuit with such elegant cronies as Charlie Chaplin, Thomas Mann and Marlene Dietrich.

The least analytic of musicians, Rubin stein is unilluminating about his technique and repertory. "Compositions," he says, "were immediately clear to me through my born musical instinct. The music simply spoke to me." What it told him, he has already conveyed in his extraordinary performances and recordings; he has little to add here. He is better on his fellow musicians, particularly those whom he does not wholly admire. He proudly plays his new recording of the Grieg concerto for the sardonic Rachma ninoff, whose sole comment is "Piano out of tune." Jascha Heifetz patronizes him musically but seeks his advice on buying gentlemanly accouterments. His great rival, Vladimir Horowitz, hangs about Rubinstein's Paris home, accepting free meals and fussing over his encores. After they fall out, ostensibly because of a broken lunch date, Rubinstein delivers a left-handed salute: "The greatest pianist, but not a great musician."

As for Composer Igor Stravinsky, Rubinstein shows him how to make more money (go on tour as a pianist and conductor of his own works) and how to cure his impotence (have a good dinner and visit a brothel). What he cannot do is persuade Stravinsky to write lyrically for the piano instead of percussively. The Russian was a master of his metier, Rubinstein concludes, but he lacked "an original melodic invention."

Rubinstein confesses to feeling out of tune with today's world, in which "moral ethics have no place" and music is dominated by "emotionless" composers like Pierre Boulez. But he refuses to join those readers of his first volume who saw him as a throwback to a better age. From his earliest years, he says, the world has shown him so much mistrust, hypocrisy and greed for power that he is not sure there ever was a Belle Epoque. More likely, with his talent, ebullience and "unconditional love of life," he has created his own epoch as he has gone along, a Rubinstein epoch. And a remarkable one it has been too.

--Christopher Porterfield

Excerpt

"The owner of a department store and his lovely wife invited me for supper after the concert. During this meal at a small table, the beautiful leg of the lady and my own nervous one were drawn magnetically toward each other. This electrifying link encouraged me to invite her to lunch with me the next day. My train was to leave late that night. She accepted and added: 'I shall take you after lunch to our house in the mountains. It has one of the loveliest views of the city.' Luncheon was gay, with stories of my life amusing her greatly, and we set tled happily in her Oldsmobile, which she drove herself . . . When she noticed that I was a little worried, she laughed, saying, 'I'm a good driver you know.' Our gay conversation soon turned very flirtatious; suddenly I grabbed her small head and gave her a hard kiss . . . She let go of the wheel and closed her eyes, and the car, with us painfully fell on its side into the thick snow. We climbed out rather painfully and the nervously, situation looked rather grim. 'What shall we do?' I asked nervously, thinking of my train and her husband. She answered, 'You must run down and ask for help. There is a garage at the bottom of the road.' My concert legs were used to pedals and not to running down slippery roads full of snow. In constant danger of slipping, I reached the wretched gas station after a good half an hour. It took us returned dreadful three hours to get safely back to town. Fortunately we returned before alarming the husband and missing my train. Both of us never forgot | the fatal kiss, but as usual, with time, it turned into a good story.

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