Lazar Berman, the tragic victim of Soviet authorities: Berman made his professional debut at age 10, playing a Mozart concerto with the Moscow Philharmonic. By the mid-1950s, he had won several competitions in the Soviet Union, as well as prizes at the Queen Elisabeth Competition and at the Franz Liszt competition. He subsequently began to acquire a small international visibility and was allowed a foreign tour, during the course of which he recorded the Beethoven Appassionata and Liszt B minor sonatas in London for Saga records. But in 1959 the barriers came down again: Berman had made the mistake of marrying a foreigner - a Frenchwoman - and, although the marriage was short-lived, he was kept at home for a decade and a half. His first American tour came only in 1976. Having been known by rumour only, he was now received rapturously, the critics reaching for the kind of phrase that most musicians agents can only dream of. Berman seemed set to carry the world before him when the Soviet system came down on him again: in 1980, banned American material was uncovered in his luggage. His tours came to an abrupt end, his contracts declared null and void. He finally left Russia in 1990. When Harold C. Schonberg, then the chief music critic of The New York Times, heard Berman in Moscow in 1961, he wrote that the pianist had 20 fingers and breathed fire.
Posted on: Fri, 15 Aug 2014 18:04:57 +0000
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