The Vancouver independent. (Vancouver, W.T. [Wash.]) 1875-1910, 1877-07-12
Rubinstein.

Anton Rubinstein is the Salvini of the
piano. Horsed on that ungainly instru-
ment, he charges victorious through
space and time; the world crackles with
the noise of enthusiastic hands; nightly
the artist strikes with sublime head some
one or other set of stars.
All who have seen him and heard him
must retain the facts of his conformation,
his appearance, his personality. The
tall, gaunt figure; the ample fall, leonine
and lustreless, of strong black hair; the
immovable mask, yellow and course, like
new potato or an old marble; the long
eyes, heavy of lid and bare of brow; the
strange forehead, narrowed abnormally
and deceptively by the broad and high
cheek bones on which it is based; the
bull throat and great hairless chin; the
uncouth and hurried gesture of saluta-
ton, with dangling arms and body bend
ing from the shoulders-all these are ia
miliar enough. In that slouching even
ing dress, SO full of semi-clerical effects,
the white tie looking curiously dirty and
grey against the brown-orange of the
skin, with that general air of genius and
savagery, of strangeness and power and
semi civilization, he reminds you ola Gu
rious kind of debauched missionary.
What he may be az coin du teu we know
not, nor care to know; on the platform
he is BIZARRE abnormal, barbaric, a genu-
inc lion of the desert, with good deal
of his native sand yet clinging to his var
nished boots. The audience greets him
with round of applause; he returns the
greeting carelessly-inditferently-he has
had good deal of that sort of thing
Your genuine comet, traversing the sys-
TENS, ends by finding their CONSERVATION
and attention rather slow work. So he
sits abruptly to the instrument, and you
recognize in his first sweep along the key
board, that he is king and lord of the
land Of virginals.
What wrist he has Beside it DAT
tagnan himself-D'Artagna the hero
swordsman, the king of the rapier-
would fain confess his own, albeit sin
ewed by ten years of point and foil, of
brawl and sale d'armes, the wrist of a
child. And his fingers-they are light
and swift as butterflies, puissant and 1.-the
and heavy as serpents; each one of them
is inspired, but all of them have COM
mon inspiration. The great Erard has
become possessed of seven devils of har-
mony. Awhile ago it was merely an
awkward piece of furniture-now it is a
living thing; it has voice and soul. 1t
cries, exults, groans, weeps, laughs, COM
plains, calls, rejoices, sorrows, commands,
in rage of sound, frenzy of melodic
utterance. Worthless of notes break forth
and whirl vertiginous; trills and eddies
rise as from "hundred-thrOated nightin-
gale;' the music flutters and heaves
and foams like great sea. There
are tempests of chords and octaves, hur-
ricanes of runs and crashes, veritable
earthquakes of tonality. The instrument
has become cloven pine, and prisons a
hundred Ariels. Within the four boards
of it the fountains of great deep OF
sound have been loosed and are yelling
forth. Now they move along murmur-
Gus and exquisite, like wind among
corn; now they fill the air with pearls,
as though innumerable bells of Elfand
rang and clashed and swung; now they
peal out virile, sonorous, imperious as
Apollo's lutte; now they roll forth fast
anu brutal rs tue CIdSu VI OCcdu. Anu al
the while the artist sits calm and mistaken.
His hands fly bewilderingly, his elbows
and shoulders work unanimously, the
long black locks sway stiff and abrupt,
and ever and anon you see the gathered
fingers start into the air, and fall, crooked
and sure, like flash upon the keys. But
the strange eyes are shut, the face is fixed
and empty AS the mask of a corpse; only
after moments of supreme exertion red
spot breaks out upon the high cheek
bones, and the forehead suddenly is
glazed with sweat.
There is something demoniac about the
whole thing. The man might be Sa
moiede sorcerer, exercising some unholy
and tremendous faculty of conjuration.
His features are still and expressionless,
but his hands seem charged with fluid,
mysterious and intense, sort of musical
electricity, that flows from them, pene-
trates, pervades, possesses the keys be-
meath them. He has lightning and thun-
der at his fingers ends, and the clavier is
stricken into very storm of harmony
when they meet it.--Home Journal.
THE weathercock on the steeple of the