Classical music
Arthur Rubinstein
Arthur Rubinstein (1887-1982), one of the greatest pianists of the twentieth century, discovered the Riviera as a teenager. Born in Lodz into a family with little inclination for music, a prodigy presented to the violinist Joseph Joachim, he studied in Berlin thanks to a scholarship obtained by the latter. It was Joachim again who sent him to Ignacy Paderewski, pianist and future Polish statesman, settled at Riond Bosson near Morges, who invited his compatriot to spend the summer in Switzerland. From there, around 1905, Rubinstein stayed at the Caux Palace above Montreux: the hotel was only three years old, and the young man compared it to “a motionless ocean liner”. Curious about everything, reading in Polish, Russian and German, he mixed throughout his life with Saint-Saëns, Casals, Caruso, Sarah Bernhardt, Colette, Picasso, Diaghilev, Stravinsky and Ansermet.
Arthur Rubinstein: eight times at the Septembre Musical
A festival regular, into his eighty-sixth year
The young man who discovered the Caux Palace in 1905 became, half a century later, one of the pillars of the Montreux Septembre Musical: from 1958 to 1965, Arthur Rubinstein took part eight times. At the height of his fame, he seemed just as happy to win over his audience as his youth had shown a childlike joy, one that carried him still in 1973, when the pianist, at eighty-six, returned to play in Montreux and receive the Prix mondial du disque, a year after the violinist Joseph Szigeti.
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