The Evolution of Emil

Pianist Artur Rubinstein was passing through Odessa one day in 1931 when a piano teacher cornered him and insisted on dragging him off to the local conservatory to hear her pupils. "You know how boring such an ordeal usually is," Rubinstein recalled a few years later. "But by God, there was this boy--short, with a mass of red hair and freckles--who played ... I can't describe it. All I can say is, if he ever comes to the U.S. I might as well pack up my bags and go."

In 1955 Emil Gilels came with full ruffles and flourishes as the first top Russian artist to perform in the U.S. since Composer Sergei Prokofiev's visit in 1921. Now, at 48, Gilels (pronounced Gill-ells) is back for his fifth tour of the U.S. and playing better than ever.

His visits, in fact, comprise a case study in the evolution of a good pianist into one of the great masters of our day. Isolated within one school of music, in this case the Russian, the growth potential of an artist such as Gilels was, like a sapling in a tin can, limited. But with a decade of exposure to the crosscurrents of Western musical life, Gilels has spread his roots and matured to a remarkable degree since his U.S. debut. His attack has become more assured. Once objective and calculating, he now plunges deeply into a work with daring abandon, searches out its mysteries, takes chances. A fireplug of a man with square, stubby hands, Gilels foregoes note-picking accuracy for a more fluid style of fingering.

At mid-tour Gilels has drawn rapturous acclaim wherever he has appeared. At Chicago's Orchestra Hall the overflow crowd spilled onto the stage.

Gilels rewarded them with a magnificent performance of his tour de force, Liszt's massively difficult Sonata in B Minor. Last week at Seattle's Opera House, the audience awarded Gilels one standing ovation after another.

Gilels, a professor of music at Moscow University, was genuinely touched by the size and fervor of his audiences. Especially, he said, since "Americans have stereo, hi-fi and the best of records. Still they come to the concert hall. The recordings to them are like canned food. A concert is like fresh food."

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