RUBINSTEIN'S PLAYING IN NEW YORK.

Globe, Volume XXI, Issue 1741, 18 September 1879, Page 4

RUBINSTEIN'S PLAYING IN NEW YORK.

[“ New York Music Trade Review.”] He had changed his tune agin. He hoptlight ladies and tip-toed fine from end to end of the key-board. He played soft, and low. and soleinu. I heard the church bells over the hills. The candles in heaven was lit, one by one ; I saw the stars arise. The great organ of eternity began to play from the world’s end to the world’s end, and all the angels went to prayers. . . . Then the music changed to water, full of feeling that couldn’t be thought, and began to drip, drop, drip, drop - clear and sweet, like tears of joy failin’ into a lake of glory. It was sweeter than that. It was as sweet as a sweetheart sweetu’d with sugar mixt with powdered silver and seed diamonds. It was too sweet. I tell you the audience cheered. Rubin he kinder bowed, like ho wanted to say, “ Much obleeged, but I’d rather you wouldn’t interrup me.” He stopt a minute or two to fetch breath. Then he got mad. He run his fingers through his hair, he shoved up his sleeves, he opened his coattails a little further’ ho drug up his stool, he leant over, and, sir, he just went for that old planner. He slapt her face, he boxed her jaws, ho pulled her nose, he pinched her ears, and he scratched her cheeks till she fairly yelled. He knockt her down, and he atompt on her shameful. She bellowed like a bull, she bleated like a calf, she howled like a hound, she squealed like a pig, she shrieked like a rat, and then ho wouldn’t let her up. Ho run a quarter stretch down the low grounds of the bass, till he got clean into the bowels of the earth, and you heard thunder galloping after thunder through the hollows and caves of perdition ; and then he fox-chased his right hand with his left till he got away out of the treble into the clouds, whar the notes was finer than the pints of cambric needles, and you couldn’t hear nothin’ but the shaders of them. And then he wouldn’t let the old planner go. He for’ard two’d, he crost over first gentleman, he crost over first lady, he balanced to pards, he chassade right and left, back to your places, he all hand’s aroun’, ladies to right, promenade all, in and out, here and there, back and forth, up and down, perpetual motion, doubled and twisted and turned and tacked and tangled into forty-leven thousand double bow knots. By jingo ! It was a mixtery. And then he wouldn’t let the old pianner go. He fetcht up his right wing, he fetcht up his left wing, he fetch up his centre, he fetcht up his reserves. He fired by file, he fired by platoons, by company, by regiments, and by brigades. He opened his canon, siege guns down thar, Napoleons here, twelve-pounders yonder, big guns, little guns, middle-size guns, round shot, shells, ahrapneils, grape, canister, mortar, mines, magazines, every livin’ battery and bomb agoin’ at the same time. The house trembled, the lights danced, the walls shuk, the floor came up, the ceilin’ came down, the sky split, the ground rockt—heavens and earth, creation, sweet potatoes, Moses, ninepences, glory, tenpenny nails, my Mary Ann, hallelujah, Samson in a 'simmon tree, Jeroosal’m, Tump Tomson in a tumbler-cart, roodie-oodle-oodle-oodle - oodle-oodle-ruddle-uddle-uddle-uddle-raddle ■ addle-addle-addle-riddle-iddle-iddle-iddle- reetle - eetle - eetle p-r-r-r-r lang ! per lang ! per lang ! p-r-r r r-r-lang ! Bang ! With that bang ! he lifted himself bodily into the a’r, and he come down with his knees, his tea fingers, his elbows, and his nose, striking every single solitary key, on that pianner at the same time. The thing busted and went off into seventeen hundred and fifty-seven thousand five hundred and forty-two demi-demi semiquavers, and I know’d no rao’. Wen I come to, I were underground about twenty foot, in a place they call Oyster Bay, treatin’ a Yankee that I never laid cyds on before, and never expect to agin. Day was a-breakin’ by the time I got to St. Nicholas’ Hotel, and I pledge you my word I didn’t know my name. The man asked me the number of my room, and I told him, “Hot music on the half shell for two ! ” I pintedly did.