Peregrinating Pole

Four months from now he expects to be in Buenos Aires, next month he expects to visit Albuquerque, next week he goes to Indianapolis, this week he was giving a concert in Carnegie Hall and celebrating his 57th birthday in Manhattan. Despite wartime transportation, Polish-born Artur Rubinstein, who in 40 years has traveled well over 1,000,000 miles, still trots the globe almost as fast and far as ever.

At the moment the pianist is trying desperately to write his autobiography on a commission from Publisher Alfred Knopf. But, mourns he, "I cannot write it. My life is too naughty. I am too shy about telling it." It is not so bad as that.

To his eternal itinerary Artur Rubinstein brings music of rich feeling combined with as much all-round mastery of the piano as any man can show. And it brings him a steady income of over $100,000 a year. He is also one of the recording industry's biggest sellers, whose discs annually gross over $500,000. His Tchaikovsky Concerto (Victor) started a national furor a year ago when Bandleader Freddie Martin heard it and made a popular arrangement that was worn ragged in juke boxes from coast to coast. Rubinstein's proper version, riding the crest with Martin's adaptation, shortly rolled up a sale of an estimated 200,000 albums. His Grieg Piano Concerto, released by Victor in July, sold over 100,000 sets in its first three months.

The calm center of all this commerce is a small, dapper, pink-cheeked inheritor of the great Polish piano traditions. He can toss off a gesture with the aplomb of a Vladimir de Pachmann. (When his Manhattan visit last week was attended by a heavy snowstorm Rubinstein looked out his hotel window and shrugged. "The weather," said he, "has no effect upon me. I impose my personality upon the weather.")

Two years ago Rubinstein bought a stucco Spanish hacienda in Hollywood from Cinemactor Pat O'Brien. There he established his blonde Polish wife and their two young children, who attend a Quaker school. As friends Rubinstein prefers writers to musicians, pals around whenever possible with Ernest Hemingway.

A Jew, Rubinstein did not wait for the Nazis to throw him out of Germany. During World War I he was deeply shocked by the German treatment of Belgians and Poles. He vowed then that he would never play in Germany again, has never done so.

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