MY YOUNG YEARS

by Arthur Rubinstein ‧ RELEASE DATE: April 1, 1973

Arthur Rubinstein was a seventh child -- gifted not only with the extraordinary talent we all listened to but also with one of the totaller recalls which makes possible this easy, expansive memoir of his years into World War I but also and especially a very happy nature which makes itself manifest throughout. As a tot he not only refused to budge from the piano seat at two or thereabouts, but before long conceived of life as a ""continuous fairy tale"" and thought of it as something to be ""accepted unconditionally."" From Polish-Jewish beginnings before the turn of the century, Arthur left home at a very early age to study music in Berlin -- under the kindly patronage of a man called Joachim and the more disciplined regimen of a teacher Barth who eventually darkened the only period in which Rubinstein had difficulties. He made concert appearances before he was thirteen; he spent a summer in Switzerland with Paderewski; and then he became the friend of a comusician Frederic with whose sister he fell in love (unrewarded), with whose mother he had an affair, and with whose other sister he maintained a long liaison filled with the drama of her marital circumstances. Rubinstein also thoroughly enjoyed the high life of the beau monde all over the continent and in New York without giving a (fore)thought to his parlous lack of money in between recitals and concerts. But then these are his ""young years"" -- resilient and outgoing and full of his musical, social and romanticissimo activities.

Pub Date: April 1, 1973

ISBN: N/A

Page Count: -

Publisher: Knopf

Review Posted Online: N/A

Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 1973

Categories: NONFICTION