Date: Fri 25-Aug-1995

Publication: Bee

Author: SHANNO

Illustration: C

Location: A-9

Quick Words:

Misha-Dichter-Classical

Full Text:

Classical Music Views-

Misha Dichter: Three Decades Later

By Vadim Prokharov

Misha Dichter, piano. Caramoor Music Festival, Katonah.

It was 1966. In the Great Hall of Moscow Conservatory the Third Tchaikovsky

Competition was coming to its conclusion. The jury entered the stage to

announce its decision. Yes, Grigory Sokolov, a 17-year-old pianist from St.

Petersburg, had won the first prize. Misha Dichter took second.

Pianist Vladimir Krainev shouted sarcastically from the second tier to the

judges, "Why do we need Misha, if we have our own Grisha!" The audience jeered

with indignation when Grisha Sokolov was receiving his prize. He wept from the

offense.

Gilels put it clearly - to those who wanted to listen - that Grisha's

performance was impeccable. It was that simple. Misha Dichter, a promising

musician, petered out in the third round, not able to withstand the strenuous

competition.

Since then Sokolov has become a pianist of great depth and intellect, though

very rarely appearing in America.

What about Dichter? After almost 30 years, this time music lovers were given

the chance to listen to him, this time at Caramoor in the Venetian Theater,

where he played Beethoven's Sonatas Nos. 18 and 32 , Brahms' Waltzes Op. 39 ,

and Liszt's Hungarian Rhapsodies Nos. 3, 11 and 15 ("Rakoczy March"). He is

still as charming as he was when he conquered the Russian audience. His

musical lines flow more naturally, without youthful exaggeration, and his

playing has become controlled by his mind, which does not allow emotions to

dominate.

Romanticism has disappeared for good, but contemporary playing, aggressive,

urgent and tough, has not emerged. Contemporaneousness expressed itself in a

detached and unaffected mode of his performance. Music, however, is a synonym

of emotiveness, and if one loses the emotional and intellectual approach,

music becomes empty.

In all the compositions the pianist performed, he never seemed to reach the

promised height. It was poetic but not enough. It was brilliant but never

breathtaking. It was intelligent but never with philosophical depth. It was

without a false significance but never gave a sense of inner importance, never

gravitating to any particular idea. It moved beautifully toward the goal, but

never quite reached it.

The pianist was constantly in a process of planning his design but never

completing it, which gave an impression of an ever open system, in which

everything was only contemplatively mapped out. He seems to be still in a

process of finding himself as a musician, artist and writer, or perhaps of

searching for a plane above all three.