These 1962/63 recordings last were available as Volume 56 of RCA’s Arthur Rubinstein Collection, in transfers that stood out for their sonorous, bass-oriented impact. On SACD the original three-channel master reveals a more judiciously equalized piano and clearer sense of room tone. You also sense this via conventional two-channel stereo, but not to such three-dimensional effect.
By the early 1960s, Rubinstein had traded in his patented freewheeling Beethoven style for a more Teutonic, textually scrupulous model. The pianist’s Pathétique sonata, for example, eschews the unspecified rhythmic and dynamic adjustments of his two previous recordings, yet the old fire has petered out in the interim. Rubinstein’s impetuous, slapdash Les Adieux from the good old days of shellac has given way to a relatively reticent, detail-oriented, and rhythmically centered reading, but it’s capped by a finale whose steady drive and controlled energy belie the pianist’s 75 years.
No reservations concern the remaining two works. Rubinstein plays the Moonlight’s famous Adagio simply, doling out rubato in eyedrop increments while paying keen attention to the middle movement’s woodwind-like phrasings and inner voices. A few tiny finger slips are of no consequence in Rubinstein’s freshly turned out, full bodied finale.
If by all accounts Rubinstein specifically learned the Moonlight for this recording, he certainly relearned, indeed radically overhauled his conception of the Appassionata. He channels the bravura of old through steadier basic tempos and clearer articulation all around. Note, for example, in the dotted diminished chords that open the finale, how Rubinstein takes care to separate the shorter notes from the longer ones, or how his left hand’s greater overall definition results from less pedaling. In every way, the 76-year-old pianist’s Appassionata is technically and musically superior to his two earlier studio efforts. RCA reproduces the original booklet notes, retaining John Briggs’ howler that the Appassionata “opens fortissimo with a powerful statement of the principal subject.” Oops!
