The Agony of the Tchaikovsky

"I suffer agony to see young artists go through the humiliation of a competition," grumbled Cellist Gregor Piatigorsky last week. "The joy of those who succeed is spoiled by the sorrow of those who have been hurt."

The cellist had just returned to the U.S. after serving as a judge at the most grueling music contest in the music world: Moscow's Third International Tchaikovsky Competition. Visibly weary after having heard 42 cellists play virtually the same music scores of times, Piatigorsky complained: "It is the obligation of people of art to find some other way to give people of talent some incentive, but it cannot be useful to discourage a hundred merely to encourage one."

But until that other way is found, the Tchaikovsky contest will have to suffice. It is hard on judges and brutal on contestants, who have to go through three rounds of competition, but it has launched some brilliant careers, notably those of Pianists Van Cliburn and Vladimir Ashkenazy.

Too Good to Sing. The Tchaikovsky launched some new personalities last week. One was a California soprano, Jane Marsh, 24, who took first prize ($2,775) in the voice competition. At first glance, Marsh seemed too good to sing true. A tall (5 ft. 11 in.) blonde with a fresh-scrubbed athletic look, she is the embodiment of a capitalist American background. She was a tomboy, an expert swimmer, a 4-H girl who in true Walt Disney tradition sold her favorite horse to pay for music lessons. She sang in public professionally for the first time only last season, when Erich Leinsdorf signed her to sing in Beethoven's Ninth Symphony in Boston.

In Moscow, the chilliest critics melted when they heard her warm, brilliant voice, and when it came to presentation, her stage technique all but obliterated the competition. The other voice contestants, especially the girls from Eastern Europe, exhibited little personality, stood like glaciers when they sang; Marsh, dressed in a flowing yellow chiffon gown, displayed the poise and personality of an established prima donna. In the finals, her arias from Otello, Susannah and Eugene Onegin (sung in Russian) convinced the jury that the voice inside the girl was as beautiful as the girl inside the dress.

Pressed Flowers. After Jane Marsh, the one American who created the greatest fascination and furor was California Pianist Misha Dichter, 20, who placed second to a remarkable young 17-year-old Soviet, Grigori Sokolov. The slight, baby-faced teen-ager played so brilliantly that the jury took the unprecedented step of awarding its compliments not only to him, but to his teacher, Professor L. I. Seligman of Leningrad.

Brilliant as Sokolov was, some judges felt that Dichter was incomparable. During the second round, he played the Schubert Sonata in A Major and Stravinsky's Petrushka in a dazzling bravura style that prompted Soviet Pianist Lev Vlasenko (who ran second to Cliburn in 1958) to cheer him as "the best musician among the piano finalists."

U.S. Conductor Walter Hendl, a judge in the piano competition, agreed that Sokolov was a true Wunderkind, but that Dichter had a more promising future as a soloist. Still, when the Russians broached the idea of dividing the first prize between Sokolov and Dichter, Hendl vetoed it on the grounds that dividing leading prizes weakened their impact. The jury voted, Sokolov won, and the crowd promptly went wild--for Dichter. Five hundred Russians who had stayed until 2 a.m. to hear the results, kept chanting "Bravo Dichter! Bravo Dichter!", and several women wept and pressed flowers into his outstretched hands. For once it appeared that in Russia, it was not whether you won, but how you played the music.

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