Annabelle Whitestone

Annabelle Whitestone, Lady Weidenfeld, is an English former concert managerHarvey Sachs, p. 362 "ff.," "Rubinstein: A Life." Grove Press (1995). Hardcover first edition: ISBN 0-80211-579-9, ISBN 978-0802115799. “Annabelle Whitestone had been educated in a convent and had had musical training. She had first heard Rubinstein play—Beethoven's Fourth Piano concerto with Barbirolli—in London in 1961, when he was awarded the gold medal of the Royal Philharmonic Society. Her career in concert management had begun with the firm of Ingpen & Williams, and she had also worked for Ibbs & Tillett before she joined Van Wyck's forces. Not many weeks after her first encounter with Rubinstein, she left Van Wyck, at the suggestion of Henryk Szeryng—one of the artists whom she had managed—and went to Madrid to work for Ernesto de Quesada's son Ricardo, who was gradually taking over the direction of the Spanish branch of the Daniel agency.
“The Quesadas, who had befriended Annabelle and who were eager to please their most celebrated client, assigned her to look after him on his Spanish trips and allowed her to disappear at a moment's notice when he summoned her: she would fly to Paris or elsewhere, whenever he was alone and free for a day or two. “I had a full time job in Madrid, and a very serious one,” she said. “We dealt with all the biggest artists—Arrau, Menuhin, everybody—and they were very much my responsibility; they would arrive, and I would suddenly say to Ricardo, ‘Look, I'm going to Paris the day after tomorrow.’ He never made any objection. I don't know what I would have done without the Quesadas as friends.” According to Annabelle, the only person besides the Quesadas who knew what was going on was Louis Bender, the trusty Hurok employee who looked after Rubinstein on his American tours.”] and promoter for classical music impresarios including Ingpen & Williams, Ibbs and Tillett, Wilfrid Van Wyck, and Conciertos Daniel.

Artur Rubinstein credited Whitestone with assisting the careers of two of his protégés, [cite book |last= Rubenstein |first= Arthur |authorlink= Arthur Rubinstein |title= My Many Years |year= 1980 |publisher= Hamish Hamilton, 1987 edition |location= Bloomsbury |pages= p. 601 |isbn= 0241123550 ] François-René Duchâble and Janina Fialkowska, as well as introducing him to the chamber music of Mozart, Haydn, and Beethoven "with all sorts of combinations of string and wind instruments which I never even heard."

In the late 1970s, Rubinstein left his wife for her [From "Publishers Weekly" “… In the last decade of his life, he began a liaison with a young English concert promoter, Annabelle Whitestone (now married to British publisher Sir George Weidenfeld).”] and lived with her in Geneva, Switzerland [cite news | url= http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,953672-2,00.html | title= A Song to Remember | work= Time Magazine | date= 1983-01-03 | author= Michael Walsh |quote= ] until his death in 1982. Whitestone helped Rubinstein to write the second volume of his autobiography, "My Many Years," which he dedicated to her. Rubinstein's original collaborator, Tony Madigan, whom he met in Marbella,cite book |last= Sachs |first= Harvey |authorlink= Harvey Sachs |pages= p. 362 "ff." |title= Rubinstein: A Life |year= 1995 |publisher= Grove Press |location= New York City |isbn= 0-80211-579-9 |quote= Tony Madigan, the grandson of Estrella Boissevain, an old friend of the Rubinsteins… ] transcribed the first phase of the book. [cite web |url= http://www.abebooks.com/servlet/SearchResults?&isbn=0394422538&nsa=1 |title=My Many Years book description |author=AbeBooks staff |format= html |work= AbeBooks |quote= The volume was dictated when the author was at the mature age of ninety-two; transcribed in large part by Tony Madigan, and the latter portion by Annabelle Whitestone. ]

Lady Weidenfeld convened "Remembering Rubinstein",cite web |url= http://www.thisislondon.co.uk/standard/article-23428620-details/Great+passion+for+the+piano+player/article.do |title= Great passion for the piano player |author= Norman Lebrecht |work= Evening Standard |date= 19 December 2007 |quote= ] a day of talks and concerts at the Royal Academy of Music on 22 January 2008,cite web |url= http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio3/musicmatters/pip/nh5ci/ |title= Music Matters |author= Tom Service |work= BBC Radio 3 |date= 12 January 2008 |quote= ] to honor the pianist "who once sold as many records as rock stars and was as much at ease in the White House as he was with his chums Picasso and Charlie Chaplin."

Annabelle Whitestone has been married to British publisher George Weidenfeld since 1992. [cite news | url= http://www.telegraph.co.uk/arts/main.jhtml?xml=/arts/2005/02/24/boweid24.xml&page=3 | title= In each of us, there's an element of snobbery — Interview with George Weidenfeld | work=The Daily Telegraph | date= 2005-02-24 | author= Elizabeth Grice |quote= I admire my wife's character, her subtlety in responses and reactions, her shrewd sense of reality - shrewder than mine. ]

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