Terry Teachout on the arts in New York City
Arthur Rubinstein, André Previn, and the London Symphony perform Saint-Saëns’ Second Piano Concerto in G Minor, Op. 22. This performance was taped at Fairfield Hall, Croydon, England, in 1975, when Rubinstein was eighty-eight years old. Saint-Saëns heard him play the concerto in Paris in 1904:
(This is the latest in a series of arts- and history-related videos that appear in this space each Monday, Wednesday, and Friday)
“The joys which nature gives to us and does not withhold entirely from even the most abandoned among us—the discovery of new truths, the enjoyment of art, the spectacle of suffering eased and attempts to cure it as far as possible—all these are enough for the happiness of life. One is inclined to fear that everything else is madness and illusion.”
Camille Saint-Saëns, Problems and Mysteries