New Kid

By Michael Walsh

He looks like your average sitcom teenager -- gangling, shy, his boyish face framed by a mop of dark curly hair. Until he sits down at the piano. Then, all of a sudden, Evgeni Kissin, who just turned 19, grows up. Big, powerful hands crash down on the keyboard with the assurance of a performer three times his age. His tone is full-blooded yet lyrical, a mature sound that most fine pianists need years to achieve. Only his interpretations betray his youth, but that is precisely what is right about them. Dashing, impetuous and seemingly spontaneous, Kissin's playing is a reminder that classical music is supposed to be fun for both performer and listener.

Who is this pianistic New Kid on the Block? For the past several years, rumors of Kissin's prowess have been filtering out of the Soviet Union. At 12, he played both Chopin piano concertos on the same program in Moscow, his home city. There were sightings in Berlin, Budapest and Belgrade. About two years ago, Herbert von Karajan gave him the kiss of recognition by inviting the lad to play the Tchaikovsky concerto with the Berlin Philharmonic. The major record labels came running.

Thus Kissin's Carnegie Hall recital in New York City last month was one of the most eagerly awaited American debuts of the past decade. It proved decisively that the advance word was no mere hype. Schumann's early "Abegg" Variations beguiled with youthful ardor and passion. The same composer's tricky Symphonic Etudes was taken at a daringly slow tempo initially, but Kissin made it work by, in effect, playing the series of challenging variations as if he were inventing the piece as he went along. After intermission, he tamed the ferocious Sixth Sonata by Sergei Prokofiev and concluded with Liszt's familiar Liebestraume No. 3 and his exotic Rhapsodie Espagnole. The audience rewarded him with a prolonged standing ovation, and Kissin capped the afternoon with four encores. (Rushing to capitalize on the excitement, RCA Victor Red Seal will have its recording of the recital in the stores by Nov. 6.)

Like most teenagers, Kissin is a romantic at heart, though his still rather narrow repertoire includes Mozart and Haydn as well as Rachmaninoff and Shostakovich. In Amsterdam last year he was scheduled to play the Shostakovich Piano Concerto No. 1, even though the piece had by then become boring for him. The day before the performance brought the news that Andrei Sakharov had died. "That changed everything completely," he says. "I used to play the final movement with a lighthearted though sarcastic mood. After the news, it felt as though I had not performed the concerto in 10 years. It was completely fresh and had more of an element of tragedy in it."

Although Kissin's schedule is rapidly filling up -- there is a European tour coming up in two weeks and a trip to Japan early next year -- he is still too young and idealistic to have been worn down by the demands of performance: the endless traveling, the constant repetition of pieces, the interviewers asking the same questions. He speaks of music in lofty terms. "True art gives birth to good as opposed to evil. Right now we are going through a very turbulent time. The goal of musicians is to make our art, which is humane, kind and international, prevail over all the other things that are evil."

After thoughts of art come the practical things in life. As soon as he has learned to drive, Kissin plans to get a car. A girlfriend may take longer; currently he travels with his mother and his teacher. Relaxation takes the form of playing the rags of Scott Joplin and reading Pushkin and Tolstoy. He rejects the notion that he is still too young to understand the depths of his art. "For me, it's natural," he says. "Please don't take this as being immodest, but with my potential, I could have already done more than I have." Given that the history of music is dotted with performers and composers who achieved greatness at an early age -- Liszt was in his mid-30s when he retired from the concert stage; Schubert was dead at 31 -- the remarkable thing is that Kissin is probably right.

With reporting by Elizabeth Rudulph/New York