Nikolay Grigoryevich Rubinstein received the displayed medal for organizing and conducting symphonic concerts during the World’s Fair of 1878 in Paris.
Technical achievements in various fields of industry, architectural projects, paintings, sculptures, literature and music created over the preceding ten years were presented at the Paris Fair. The work of the French sculptor Frédéric Auguste Bartholdi — the giant head of the Statue of Liberty — caused a lot of excitement. Subsequently, the French Government gifted this statue to the United States of America.
A plethora of outstanding creators from the Russian Empire presented their works at the Paris exhibition. The Russian pavilion was simply amazing: for its design, the architect Ivan Pavlovich Ropet combined the details of the Russian izba (a simple dwelling) with the Kremlin palaces and crowned them with a Byzantine dome. Many awards and diplomas were awarded to Russian exhibits, including Yablochkov’s electric candles that illuminated the boulevards of Paris, Smirnov’s vodka, Becker’s musical instruments, Jurgenson’s musical editions, and paintings by Siemiradzki and Kramskoy.
Music of the participating countries was played daily in the hall of the main pavilion of the exhibition, the Trocadéro Palace, which accommodated 4,500 people. The Russian concerts under the direction of Nikolay Rubinstein were extremely successful. The first concert on September 9, 1878, began with Glinka’s compositions — the overture to “Ruslan and Lyudmila” and the chorus from “A Life for the Tsar”. The program also included works by Dargomyzhsky, Bortnyansky, and Anton Rubinstein. Nikolay Rubinstein performed not only as a conductor, but also as a pianist. He played Tchaikovsky’s Piano Concerto No. 1 with Édouard Colonne, a French music maestro, conducting.
In his review, a music critic and art historian Vladimir Vasilievich Stasov emphasized that all tickets were sold out a week before the concert and not a single spectator left the hall before its end — it was unusual for that time. Nikolay Rubinstein was most celebrated and praised. The Russian musicians and concerts at the Trocadéro were truly triumphal.
