Marriage and family Of his youth, Rubinstein once said: "It is said of me that when I was young I divided my time impartially among wine, women and song. I deny this categorically. Ninety percent of my interests were women." a 24-year-old Polish
ballerina (who had studied with
Mary Wigman). Nela was the daughter of the Polish conductor
Emil Młynarski and his wife Anna Talko-Hryncewicz, who was from a Polish aristocratic
heraldic family of Iłgowski coat of arms. Nela had first fallen in love with Rubinstein when she was 18, but married
Mieczysław Munz, another Polish-American pianist, after Rubinstein began an affair with an Italian princess. Nela subsequently divorced Munz and three years later married Rubinstein. Nela subsequently wrote ''Nela's Cookbook'', which included the dishes she prepared for the couple's legendary parties. Both before and during his marriage, Rubinstein carried on a series of affairs with women, including Lesley Jowitt, the wife of the British politician
William Jowitt, and
Irene Curzon. In addition to fathering a daughter (Brazilian pianist
Luli Oswald) with the Italian marchioness Paola Medici del Vascello (née Princess Paola di Viggiano, also: Donna Paola Sanfelice dei Principi di Viggiano), he may have been the father of American decorator and artist
Muriel Draper's son
Sanders Draper, who died in World War II. After the adoption, her name was Margarida Henriqueta Marchesini. Oswald later performed under the stage name Luli Oswald. Though he and Nela never divorced, in 1977, at age 90, he left her for
Annabelle Whitestone, then 33 years old.
Jewish identity An
agnostic, Rubinstein was proud of his Jewish heritage. He was a supporter of Israel,
Charitable contributions Rubinstein was active in supporting charities throughout his life. He performed charity concerts to raise donations for numerous organizations which interested him. In 1961, he performed ten recitals in Carnegie Hall to raise roughly $100,000 for charities including
Big Brothers,
United Jewish Appeal,
Polish Assistance, Musicians Emergency fund, the
National Association for Mental Health, and the
Legal Defense Fund of the National Advancement of Colored People.
On practice In his two autobiographies, Rubinstein is often intensely self-critical. A natural pianist with a big technique, he claimed that he practiced as little as possible, learning new pieces quickly and with insufficient attention to detail, relying on his charm and charisma to conceal the lack of finish in his playing. The literal truth of these self-directed critiques is open to question: Rubinstein wasn't averse to making himself the butt of a good story. Even so, he insisted that his attitude toward practicing changed after his marriage. He stated that he did not want his children to see him as a second-rater, so he began in the summer of 1934 to restudy his entire repertoire. "I buckled down back to work—six hours, eight hours, nine hours a day." he recalled in 1958. "And a strange thing happened. ... I began to discover new meanings, new qualities, new possibilities in music that I have been regularly playing for more than 30 years." In general, however, Rubinstein believed that excessive practice could be dangerous for young pianists. Perhaps recalling his own youthful brush with repetitive-stress syndrome, Rubinstein regularly advised that young pianists should practice no more than three hours a day. "I was born very, very lazy and I don't always practice very long", he said, "but I must say, in my defense, that it is not so good, in a musical way, to overpractice. When you do, the music seems to come out of your pocket. If you play with a feeling of 'Oh, I know this', you play without that little drop of fresh blood that is necessary—and the audience feels it." Of his own practice methods, he said, "At every concert I leave a lot to the moment. I must have the unexpected, the unforeseen. I want to risk, to dare. I want to be surprised by what comes out. I want to enjoy it more than the audience. That way the music can bloom anew. It's like making love. The act is always the same, but each time it's different."
Pupils Rubinstein was reluctant to teach in his earlier life, refusing to accept
William Kapell's request for lessons. It was not until the late 1950s that he accepted his first pupil,
Dubravka Tomšič Srebotnjak. Other pupils of Rubinstein include
François-René Duchâble,
Avi Schönfeld,
Ann Schein Carlyss,
Eugen Indjic,
Janina Fialkowska,
Dean Kramer and Marc Laforêt. Rubinstein also gave master classes towards the end of his life. ==Death and legacy==