Testing Their Medals

The cellist was "exceptional," declared Boston Symphony Concertmaster Joseph Silverstein. The pianist played "as well as anybody need ever play," said Conductor Erich Leinsdorf. The soloists who won these praises from such rigorous judges were not big concert stars but virtually unknown American students: New York City's Stephen Kates, 23, and Los Angeles' Misha Dichter, 20, both fresh from winning silver medals at the Third International Tchaikovsky Competition in Moscow.

America's other Tchaikovsky prizewinners--Sopranos Jane Marsh, 24, and Veronica Tyler, 29, and Bass Simon Estes, 28--had already made impressive postcontest showings with the Boston Symphony at Tanglewood last month. Now Kates and Dichter as well have added luster to their own bright promise.

No War Horse. Kates, the son and grandson of professional string musicians and a student of Gregor Piatigorsky, played the Shostakovich Cello Concerto, with which he had stirred the Moscow judges and audience in June. ("Viennese refinements were out--they wanted guts, they wanted the roof to come down," he said.) Hunching his lanky frame over the cello, Kates boldly carved out the jagged, pulsating lines of the piece with a firm tone and a left hand that skipped deftly through the most prickly technical snares. The roof came down.

Pianist Dichter--who was born in Shanghai midway in his parents' flight from Poland in 1945--also turned on Tanglewood's audiences. He played the Tchaikovsky Piano Concerto No. 1, a risky selection for any young pianist ever since Van Cliburn's powerful, sweeping version of it carried him to victory in the 1958 Moscow competition. But Dichter made the concerto his own, giving it unusual clarity and lightness.

Leinsdorf noted later that Dichter approached the concerto not as if it were an old war horse but as a new piece: "He goes back to the printed instructions of the composer. He does not add a number of silly things which have become traditional." Said Concertmaster Silverstein: "Seldom has the orchestra been so impressed with a single performer."

Soprano Marsh was scheduled to sing again, but she developed tonsillitis. When the malady lingered on, a hasty call went out to Veronica Tyler. Arriving from New York a bare hour ahead of time with her yellow gown over her arm, Tyler swept onstage with complete aplomb and velvet voice to repeat two of the arias she had sung in her previous appearance with the orchestra. "These young singers and musicians are great--no pretensions, natural, enthusiastic, no pettiness," marveled Orchestra Manager Thomas Perry. Shrugged Baltimore-born Tyler: "I've learned to relax, and I love to sing. I can do it anywhere, any time."

No Rush. Their very presence at Tanglewood was evidence that the young Americans are finding their Moscow medals to be badges of admission to some of the music world's major concert stages and recording studios. Yet they are trying not to rush recklessly ahead of their still-maturing talents. Marsh turned down a chance to sing with the Metropolitan Opera because she felt she wasn't ready for it. Even the crowd-pleasing Dichter, who has just signed with Sol Hurok, plans to return to classes this fall at Manhattan's Juilliard School of Music, where he works with the grande dame of piano coaches, Rosina Lhevinne.

All of which makes good sense to Leinsdorf. Though he beamed like a proud uncle as he nudged the gifted prizewinners into the limelight at Tanglewood, he cautioned later: "An artist is never finished. No one can foretell how life is going to affect him. Five years from now the Moscow winners may be international stars or forgotten men and women. Only time will tell."

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