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The pianist whose American visit was by far the most spectacular was Anton Rubinstein (1829-94), whose tour in 1872-3, in conjunction with the Polish violinist Henryk Wieniawski (1835-80), was sponsored by the Steinway piano firm. Rubinstein offered a wide-ranging historical repertoire, focusing on the music of Beethoven, Mendelssohn, Chopin, and Schumann; he also presented a healthy dose of his own compositions. His performances were frequently technically flawed but filled with passion and never failed to excite his audiences.

Although Anton Rubinstein's performances were generally praised, there were occasional comments that he had technical flaws and memory lapses, partly attributable to his greater commitment to composing than performing. His tempestuousness as a performer caused him to lose physical control, but it was his passion that helped his performances transcend their technical inadequacies. Although at first critics thought Rubinstein's performances were faithful to the composer's intent, as the season wore on they were more likely to take exception to his highly individualistic and mannered performances. His own works for piano were conservative and often neoclassical. Rubinstein's concerts reflect the sacralization of music, which was no longer just entertainment but art that needed to be carefully studied and listened to respectfully. Performers demanded reverence in the concert hall and fulfilled the function of priests who interpreted to the laity the ineffable mysteries of the great works of art.

This chapter examines the role of Anton Rubinstein in the rise of Russian Jewish musicians. It analyzes what his life and art may reveal about Jews, Russians, and music in the nineteenth century, and traces the effects of his own personal dilemmas of identity on his views of music and nationalism. The chapter also argues that Rubinstein's quest to reconcile art and religion, Judaism and Christianity, and East and West reflected a novel expression of a hybrid Russian Jewish identity which deserves to be reconsidered in the context of Russian and Jewish history.

An artistic highlight of Anton Rubinstein's American tour was a series of more than forty appearances with Theodore Thomas and his orchestra. Rubinstein and Thomas had a successful musical rapport, which inspired some of the pianist's best performances. Rubinstein conducted six performances of his Ocean Symphony in its then complete, six-movement version, four with Thomas's orchestra, one with the Harvard Musical Association, and one with the New York Philharmonic. Rubinstein's series of seven farewell recitals in New York (and three in Boston) that surveyed the history of keyboard literature is deservedly famous. Each recital was substantial and generally well performed, but Rubinstein's occasional memory lapses and technical slips were evident. By primarily performing the music of other composers, Rubinstein played a strategic role in the canonization of the standard piano repertoire, and his impassioned performances of these works made them palatable for the first time to the general public.

The violinist Henryk Wieniawski, though at first in Rubinstein's shadow, soon developed his own following appreciative of his pure tone and phenomenal technique. Rubinstein's other assisting artists, the soprano Louise Liebhart and the contralto Louise Ormeny, were not as well received. Besides concerto appearances with orchestra, Rubinstein also performed in a series of chamber music concerts in New York and at a concert of the New York Philharmonic. Rubinstein's association with the Steinway firm was both musically and socially beneficial.

This chapter focuses on the establishment of the Russian Musical Society in the era of the Great Reforms and its significance as a cultural voluntary association. The Society's legal charter, membership policies, and leadership are explored in detail. The contributions of both Anton Rubinstein and Grand Duchess Elena Pavlovna are examined through the memoir literature, while the periodical press is used to explore the controversies that surrounded the Society's initial concert seasons and its first efforts at music education. Although polemical battles with the Balakirev Circle and its supporters are explored, the chapter focuses primarily on the Society's contributions to the modernization of Russian musical life.

Hans von Bülow was notoriously frank and admitted in a newspaper interview that Carl Bergmann had been fired as his conductor in Boston because of dereliction of duty and his interest in beer, like most Germans as he was quoted to say. His anti-German remarks created an outrage and concert attendance at many of Bülow's appearances suffered. Although Bülow was generally considered to have a more perfect technique and memory than Rubinstein, and surpassed his friendly rival on such issues as fidelity to the score and conscientious interpretation, Bülow was still found wanting by being too intellectual, analytical, and distant. In Baltimore, his appearances included concerts with the Peabody Institute Orchestra conducted by his former pupil Asger Hamerik, and in Washington, D.C., he made acquaintance with Romaine von Overbeck, with whom he would fall in love.

Anton Rubinstein opened the St. Petersburg Conservatory, which focused attention on the contentious issue of how Russian musicians should be trained. To Rubinstein, good pedagogy was unrelated to nationality, whereas dilettantism was the negation of competence. The social outcome of his position was radical: the title of “free artist,” which recognized conservatory graduates as members of a profession, like doctors or soldiers. Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky had petitioned to enroll in the “music school” in August 1862. For knowledge of his years there, this book is indebted to Hermann Laroche, the composer's best friend at the time. Tchaikovsky was a good singer. He studied piano for a time, flute with Cesare Ciardi, organ with Heinrich Stiehl, counterpoint and form with Nikolay Ivanovich Zaremba, and instrumentation and free composition with Anton Rubinstein. The heart of Tchaikovsky's training was his study with Anton Rubinstein.

This chapter sums up the key findings of this study on the relation among serfdom, society, and the arts in imperial Russia, and discusses narratives of awakening from 1838 to 1861 and the emancipation of the serfs under Alexander II. It highlights the contribution of various artists in the development of Russian art, including Anton Rubinstein in classical music and Alexander Ostrovsky in the theater. The chapter also mentions that while Russia was still in many ways a big importer of culture in the early nineteenth century, the export factor took on international significance, particularly in literature, music, and ballet.

Hans von Bülow made two tours of the Midwest, where he essentially gave solo recitals with only a brief respite by the Canadian-American soprano Lizzie Cronyn (1852-1921). Letters that Bülow wrote while in America vividly record the rigors of constant traveling, which eventually wreaked havoc on his already depleted nervous system, forcing him to withdraw from his contract after fulfilling only 139 concerts out of 172. Bülow's performances, though possessing greater perfection than Rubinstein's, did not create the same sensation as Rubinstein's overtly emotional ones. However, Bülow's greater faithfulness to the intentions of the composers helped establish orthodox interpretations of the canonic piano repertoire for the next generation of serious performers and teachers.

From 1859 to 1918, the Russian Musical Society strove to institutionalize and professionalize music education and concert life in the Russian Empire. From modest beginnings, the Society ultimately developed into a powerful musical institution that provided a degree of coherence and consistency to an increasingly diverse musical life. The introduction outlines for readers key individuals, issues, and themes, including the importance of voluntary associations in the development of civil society in Russia. In addition to providing a brief overview of the book as a whole, the introduction provides readers with a short analysis of the historiography of nineteenth‐century Russian musical life as a master narrative designed to mold both scholarly and public opinion.

This introductory chapter discusses the theme of this book, which is about the Jews' search for modern identity through music, in the late Russian Empire. It explains that the first hints of a broader new relationship between Jews and music in eastern Europe appeared in mid-nineteenth-century Odessa, and that the fabled connection between Jews and music in Odessa was solidified through decades of Russian and Yiddish popular songs and the later writings of Isaac Babel, Alexander Kuprin, and others. The chapter also highlights the role of composer Anton Rubinstein in creating the conditions for the rise of Jewish musicians in Russian society.

This chapter describes some of the situations encountered by Fannie Bloomfield-Zeisler during her European tour in 1893–1894, 1899, 1902, and 1912. Bloomfield-Zeisler made her Berlin debut at the Singakademie in a concert featuring Frederic Chopin's F Minor and Anton Rubinstein's D Minor piano concertos with the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra; the performance was a success with both audience and critics. In 1902, she faced a hostile audience when making her Paris debut with the Lamoureux Orchestra. The chapter recounts Bloomfield-Zeisler's initial reluctance to play before Berlin critics, who were notorious for their harshness and their susceptibility to bribes; her interpretation of Rubinstein's piano concerto with the composer in the audience; and her controversial orchestral debut in Paris at a time when France was experiencing a time of intense musical nationalism, and Parisian audiences viewed a soloist performing with orchestra as synonymous with a shallow display of virtuosity.

This chapter explores opera—established as the antithesis of musical priesthood—as a site of debate over musical sensuality including the gendered discourse on opera and the critique of purity in those composers who, in Wagner’s words, “failed” to write opera with their “chaste and innocent hands.” A generation of revolutionary music critics, including Rudolf Benfey and Ludwig Eckardt, applied these Wagnerian values to Brahms with negative results, depicting purity as his weakest characteristic. Brahms’s own potential libretti and styles of opera in the 1860s and 1870s seem to explore alternatives to the Wagnerian Gesamtkunstwerk, from genres such as the oratorio to Singspiel, and topics including Carlo Gozzi’s eighteenth-century fairy-tale plays. Two of Brahms’s works from this period, the Op. 57 Daumer lieder and Op. 50 Rinaldo, contain dramatic and erotic elements that inspired some contemporaries to hope Brahms would take the next step toward an opera.