Rubato (Italian for “stolen”) is the soul of Romantic performance. Chopin said: “The left hand is the kapellmeister — it must keep time; the right hand may sing freely.”
The essence of rubato is balance: time “stolen” in one place (speeding up) must be “returned” in another (slowing down). Masters of rubato — Horowitz (born in Kyiv) and Richter (born in Zhytomyr) — did this so naturally that the listener felt freedom without noticing any breach of form.
The term is short for tempo rubato — “stolen time.” A distinction is drawn between the older type of rubato, in which the melody departs freely over a strictly kept accompaniment, and the later, Romantic type, in which the whole texture flexibly “breathes” at once. Overusing rubato turns a performance mannered, and lacking it turns it mechanical; a sense of proportion here is counted among the subtlest marks of a musician's taste.
