Bolshoy Theater.

On 9/21 April he conducted the second of Prince Odoyevskys

Russian Concerts, which included works by Wielhorski, Glinka, Alyabyev, and
Verstovsky, as well as another performance of his own overture to Dmitry Donskoy. Toward the end of April he returned to Moscow, and on 9/21 May played
his Piano Concerto in E minor in its entirety at the Hall of the Nobility. A few
days later he wrote to his publisher, Bernhard: In the nancial respect my concert was a failure, but the public was happy.14 Rubinstein needed a more regular
source of income, and he tried to secure a position that would give him a better
living, but, as he reported to Bernhard, the general (i.e., Aleksandr Mikhaylovich Gedeonov, who headed the Directorate of Imperial Theaters from 1834 to
1858) had categorically refused him two recently announced posts, claiming
they had already been lled.
In mid-June Rubinstein set off on a concert tour of Kharkov and Odessa but
returned to Moscow at the beginning of July to begin setting the Tartar scene
of Dmitry Donskoy, completing it in October. The opera concerns the liberation
of Russia from the Tartar yoke, as the period of Russias domination by the
Golden Horde is generally known. Grand Duke Dmitry, advancing his army toward the Don (hence the later appellation Donskoy), met the Tartar Khan
Mamay on Kulikovo eld on 8 September 1380 and routed him. This was the
rst signicant defeat that the Russians inicted on their oppressors, and the
battle is considered a milestone in Russian history. In reality the victory, if not
entirely hollow, failed to secure complete emancipation from the Tartars, which
took about another hundred years to achieve. In the hands of Glinka or Borodin,
a heroic subject such as this might have produced a work of great national signicance, but Rubinstein was content merely to use it as a pretext for introducing a clichd and trivial love story. Dmitry and the boyar Tverskoy are rivals for
the hand of Kseniya. When Dmitry is betrayed by his erstwhile allies, he is
forced to face Mamay alone. His victory over the Tartars, of course, secures for
him the prize of Kseniyas hand.
With the score of the opera completed, Rubinstein rented an apartment on
the Bolshaya Konyushennaya in St. Petersburg for twenty rubles in silver a
month and began looking for pupils. He also brought with him two works that
he had begun the previous year: the set of Six Studies for piano, later published
as Op. 23, and the Six Fables of Krlov.15 Given Rubinsteins implicit belief in
the need for musical professionalism, he must have taken particular delight in
Quartet, the fourth song of the cycle. Here a monkey, a donkey, a goat, and a
bear sit down to play a string quartet, but they cannot decide how to arrange
themselves in order to captivate the world with their art. Whichever position
they choose, the music still comes out badly, so they ask a passing nightingale
to resolve their dilemma. The nightingale replies: In order to be a musician
you need skill and ears a little more sensitive than yours. However you sit, my
friends, you will still be no good as musicians.
Rubinstein had received vague assurances from the Directorate of Imperial
Theaters that Dmitry Donskoy would be staged after Easter, but his doubts

28 Anton Rubinstein