Monday, May. 02, 1960
The Big Game
Not long ago, an English music critic tagged U.S. Pianist Shura Cherkassky with an odd title: "Lew Hoad of the Piano." Like Tennis Player Hoad, explained the critic, Cherkassky was "capable of astonishing feats and of hardly less astonishing lapses." Cherkassky's feats, like Hoad's, have so outnumbered his lapses that he has become one of the most sought-after artists on the European concert circuit. Last week he demonstrated why: with service under firm control and ground strokes booming, he swept through a performance of Tchaikovsky's Piano Concerto No. 1, with Herbert von Karajan and the Berlin Philharmonic, that had critics groping for superlatives.
At the piano, short (5 ft. 6 in.), 49-year-old Shura Cherkassky looked a little like a pouncing falcon. Perched on the edge of his stool, his face near the keys, he struck thunderous volleys of sound without clouting the keys or becoming percussive and harsh. Unhampered by a span* of only ten keys, he executed impressively agile runs, showed off subtly colored nuances without ever sagging into sentimentality. Headlined Der Tagesspiegel: "A TRIUMPH OF VIRTUOSITY!"
Despite such European praise, Cherkassky has not played in the U.S. in twelve years, and few U.S. concertgoers can even recall his early U.S. career. Son of an Odessa dentist, Shura emigrated to the U.S. with his family when he was eleven, made his concert debut in Baltimore when he was twelve, but never really succeeded on the concert circuit. At war's end, just as a whole new generation of pianists was growing up, Cherkassky headed for Europe, where he now gives about 80 concerts per season, is booked as long as five years in advance. All during his self-imposed exile he has insisted that if he returns to the U.S. it must be "only in a really big way." Next fall he will get his chance, will make a coast-to-coast U.S. tour that will demonstrate, he hopes, how well the Big Game can be played.
* As compared with the twelve-key reach of Van Cliburn and Rubinstein.
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