Youngest Ambassador
The town of Westerville, Ohio (population: 7011), previously unknown to musical fame, can henceforth claim one modest distinction. Earlier this year it was the site of the American debut of an exciting young Russian pianist named Grigory Sokolov. Sokolov, who was only eighteen at the time (he has since attained his nineteenth birthday), appeared on the campus of Otterbein College as part of that institution’s concert series. He was warmly received by the audience and enthusiastieally reviewed in the newspapers of Columbus, the largest nearby city. Within a few weeks he was receiving similar acclaim in New York, Philadelphia, and other cities on his tour schedule, and it seemed evident that a new pianist of international stature had arrived on the scene.
The Westerville debut was no accident: it was carefully arranged by the impresario S. Hurok, who wanted the young man to get the feel of things in America before playing in a major center. “We don’t like to bring a new artist cold to New York, especially a youngster like that,” explained one of the Hurok spokesmen. “We like them to warm up a bit.”
In Sokolov’s case, the precaution seems hardly necessary. For although Sokolov is the youngest musical emissary ever sent forth by Gosskonzert, the official Soviet concert agency, and although technically he still is a student at the Leningrad Conservatory, he is a thoroughly poised performer on the stage, a natural-born expert at parrying interview questions, and a young man apparently untroubled by pressures of any kind.
Sokolov is a sturdily built youth of average height, with large hands, a strong jaw, a shock of dark brown hair, anti something of a baby face. Born in Leningrad in 1950, he has been a big man in Soviet musical circles since 1966 when he won first piano prize in the third International Tchaikovsky Competition in Moscow—the contest that sent Van Clibttrn into orbit in 1958 (Cliburn was twenty-four at the time—practicallv an old man by Sokolovian standards). Sokolov’s main competition at the Tchaikovsky event came from the twenty-year-old American Mischa Dichter; lor a time the judges considered dividing the prize between them. But they finally decided that splitting the award would vitiate its effect, and voted to give it to Sokolov. Mr. Hurok, after hearing Sokolov and Dichter play, cannily took both under his managerial wing; and by the time Sokolov had completed his tour this spring, Hurok had arranged to bring him back for a second visit next season.
Sokolov impressed most of those who heard him during his tour with his combination of prodigious technique and youthful romantic fervor. He isn’t the world’s most accurate pianist, but even his mistakes have a certain grandeur about them.
His clinkers sound like Rubinstein’s,” is the way one listener put it. He plays the piano with obvious delight in its sheer sound and scope and probably works as hard at his art as any pianist in the business. By his own admission fie practices six hours every day, and sometimes he goes at it even longer. At his final appearance in New York last March, he played Beethoven’s Emperor Concerto with the Moscow State Symphony Orchestra (also visiting the United States at the time) at a Carnegie Hall Sunday matinee. He began practicing the Emperor in a hotel studio at 8 A.M. Sunday, knocked off lor lunch at noon, went to Carnegie Hall at 1 P.M., and resumed practicing there until just before the concert started at 2:30. “The more we practice, the better it comes out,” he says. “If you enjoy a job, you get pleasure out of working at it.”
His repertory is exceptionally large for a young man. When you ask him who his favorite composers are, he reels off a list: Bach, Rameau, Couperin, Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven, Chopin, Saint-Saens, Ravel, Scriabin, Rachmaninoff, Prokofiev. It’s hard to tell if he’s being systematic or diplomatic, but there is no doubt that he plays them all. His major piece at the Tchaikovsky Competition was the Saint-Saens G Minor Concerto (which has just been released here in a MelodiyaAngel recording) ; his debut appearance in Westerville included the Schubert Sonata in A Minor, Op. 142, the Chopin B-Minor Sonata, Op. 58, and the Prokofiev Sonata No. 7 in B-flat, Op. 83.
For all the enthusiasm and impetuousness that go into his playing, young Grisha Sokolov is politely restrained, not to say cryptic, in his conversation. We talked in the S. Hurok office with the help of Peter Vares, an interpreter sent from the Soviet Union to accompany the young pianist on his tour.
Sokolov did not appear to have spent any of his spare time here either sight-seeing or investigating the American musical scene. “Practicing and art museums was the way he described his two major preoccupations during his two months here. He had attended concerts, yes, but they had all been those of the Moscow State Symphony, whose tour coincided with his. Aside Irom Horowitz, whom he greatly admires, he professed no opinions on any other American pianists, young or old. Asked about Dichter, he said he hadn’t heard him (Moscow competitors don’t get to listen to one another) , but that he had heard he was a good pianist. He wasn’t much more communicative about Soviet pianists, singling out only Emil Gilels and Vladimir Sofronitzky, who died in 1961 at the age of fifty-nine. Sofronitzky never came to America, and Sokolov himself only heard him on records, but he regards him as one of the greatest pianists who ever lived.
Sokolov said he had liked American audiences and hadn’t noticed any particular difference between their reaction to his playing and that of Soviet audiences. He had felt a certain warmth, he said, toward the college audiences, who had seemed especially responsive and crowded around him afterward to offer congratulations and ask questions. Young listeners in the Soviet Union did the same thing, he said. Did he prefer playing solos or concertos? He preferred both. Did he like playing in the classical or romantic repertory? He liked both. Did he know yet what the exact dates of his 1970 return to the United States would be? That was up to Gosskonzert and Mr. Hurok.
There was a pause in the conversation, and Mr. Vares, the interpreter, urged: “Ask him some more questions.” So I inquired how he had started playing the piano. Sokolov said there had been a piano in his home in Leningrad (his father was an engineer with an interest in music) , and he had just started playing it. He must have played it well, because at the age of seven he was already studying with L. N. Zelikman of the Leningrad State Conservatory, who is still his teacher. Sokolov has four years to go before he gets his diploma from the Conservatory, and he also mentioned the possibility of postgraduate work there. “For the sake of argument,” 1 asked, “what would happen if you left the Conservatory now and just decided to go on concertizing?” “It would be detrimental to my career not to continue at the Conservatory,” he said. “Besides, as it is, I do both. I continue my studies, and I concertize.”
As extensive as his repertory is, Sokolov does not probe very deeply into contemporary music. Prokofiev and Shostakovich marked the limits he reached on his American tour, though he says he also plays some Stravinsky. Asked whether he had come into contact with electronic music, he replied gravely: “I’ve heard about it, but I haven’t heard it.” He didn’t seem in any hurry, either.
After the interview Sokolov, who was to leave for Russia the next day, went around the Hurok. office saying his good-byes, summoning up a few words of English (he has acquired a good accent, if not yet a large vocabulary) to do so. Then he rummaged around in a storeroom, looking for a poster advertising his concerts to take home with him as a souvenir. He found one and emerged with a triumphant smile, looking for the first time like a teenage boy.
Although Sokolov himself won’t be back until next year, Angel has so tar released two recordings by him made in Russia by its Soviet affiliate, Melodiya. One couples the Saint-Saens Concerto No. 2 in G Minor with Schumann’s Carnaval (SR-40047); the other is devoted to the Tchaikovsky Concerto No. 1 in B-flat Minor (SR-40016). Even the record jackets afford evidence of Sokolov’s rise in the musical world, for while the Tchaikovsky, the earlier of the two releases, has a picture of the composer on the cover, a drawing of Sokolov adorns the Saint-Saens-Schumann record.
The latter also is somewhat more revelatory of the pianist’s talents. For while the Tchaikovsky amply discloses the young man’s abundance of temperament, it is recorded with a muddiness of sound that obscures much of the detail, and the orchestral accompaniment by Neimye Yarve and the U.S.S.R. Symphony Orchestra seems like a hash at times.
Things go much better in the Saint-Saens, though the orchestra and conductor are the same. The concerto is far less hackneyed, and Sokolov seems to find greater freedom in it. He wanders through it with sure fingers and a fine poetic feeling; obviously he knew what he was about when he played it at the competition. Schumann’s Carnaval also comes through with a blend of brilliance and expressivity, with a feeling of youthfulness pervading all, and the piece is for once set forth with a sense of unity and climax, rather than as a section-bysection operation.
Sometimes in both of these records Sokolov gives the impression of playing with too much volume and velocity for his own good; there are occasional attempts to tone things down a bit, but they seem to be made only reluctantly. Perhaps by the time he returns in the 1970-1971 season he will have begun to master the art of playing softly. After all, at the age of nineteen you have to have something left to learn.