Anton Rubinstein was a towering figure of Russian musical life, and one of the 19th century’s most charismatic musical figures. Rivalled at the keyboard only by Liszt, he was near the last in a line of pianist-composers that climaxed with Liszt, Busoni, and Rachmaninov. Like them, Rubinstein’s reputation as a composer in his day was more controversial than his reputation as a performer. But unlike them, his vast compositional output, much of it containing music of beauty and originality, still remains relatively unexplored territory. Rubinstein was one of the most prolific composers of the 19th century, with a catalogue of works ranging from several hundred solo piano compositions, to concertos, symphonies, chamber music, operas, choral works, and songs.

This disc brings to a conclusion Joseph Banowetz's admirable survey of Rubinstein's complete music for piano and orchestra for Marco Polo. The Fifth Concerto (dating from 1874) is by far the most monumental, both in terms of duration it spans some 46 minutes—and in the virtuosic demands that it places on any pianist brave enough to undertake a performance. Like the Fourth, which was taken into the repertoire of Josef Hofmann the Fifth also found a legendary advocate in Josef Lhevinne, who included it in his sensational American debut concert with Safanov and the Russian Symphony Orchestra in New York in 1906.

Anton Rubinstein was a towering figure of Russian musical life, and one of the 19th century’s most charismatic musical figures. Rivalled at the keyboard only by Liszt, he was near the last in line of pianist-composers that reached a climax with Liszt, Busoni, and Rachmaninov. Like them Rubinstein’s reputation as a composer in his day was more controversial than his reputation as a performer, but unlike them, his vast compositional output, much of it containing music of beauty and originality, still remains relatively unexplored territory. Rubinstein wrote his eight works for piano and orchestra over the last 44 years of his life, with the five concertos dating from 1850–1874.

If, as Joseph Banowetz claims in his lively and informed notes, Rubinstein was ''the last in a line of pianist-composers that climaxed with Liszt, Busoni and Rachmaninov'', it is surely necessary to add that he was hardly a composer in the same league. And while I am more than grateful to have two such rarely heard concertos on record, powerfully and persuasively performed, it is difficult to warm to their often facile and derivative quality. Rubinstein may have been an anarchic and elemental virtuoso but he could be a sadly conventional composer. Clearly, he knew the finale of Beethoven's E flat Piano Sonata, Op. 31 No. 3, all too well, and in the First Concerto its propulsive tarantella combines uneasily with a Mendelssohnian mix of earnestness and sugar-sweet facility.