structural:expansion, stylistic:tone
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."