Young music fans scuffle to hear 81-year-old pianist

Press, 22 April 1986, Page 10

Young music fans scuffle to hear 81-year-old pianist

NZPA-Reuter Moscow Music students scuffled with the police yesterday in a bid to hear Vladimir Horowitz’s first concert in the Soviet Union for 61 years, and a few of them succeeded in getting into the Moscow Conservatoire without tickets. The live international broadcast was sold out and, as important figures from the Soviet art world and foreign diplomats filed through police cordons into the hall, people on the streets begged for spare tickets. Then about 25 students began scuffling with the police in a desperate at-

tempt to hear the pianist, whose work they know only from records. Horowitz, aged 81, emigrated from the Soviet Union in 1925 and returned last week to give two concerts, one in Moscow and the other in Leningrad, next Sunday. It was not clear how many students managed to reach the hall. But as Horowitz began the first piece on the programme, three sonatas by Domenico Scarlatti, the police were dragging at least six young people out of the back balcony. The students sneaked back to their standing places and

the police gave up trying to move them. Police officers cleared more students from the roof, which they had reached by climbing a fire escape. The concert then progressed peacefully to Mozart’s "Sonata in C major,” two preludes by Sergei Rachmaninov and two studies by Alexander Scriabin. "Wonderful,” proclaimed a middle-aged Georgian woman. “Of course I have heard his records, but this is another experience. He has such an Intimate style. The music comes from

inside." In the second half Horowitz played Schubert, Listz, and two mazurkas and the "Polonaise in Aflat major” by Chopin. At the end the audience gave him a standing ovation and would not let him get away without an encore — three preludes by Rachmaninov. Although he says he has no political disagreements with his native country, he is now an American citizen and intends to go back to the United States at the end of the month.