Back to the Motherland : Soviets Invite Pianist Davidovich and Her Son to Perform

Pianist Bella Davidovich and her son, violinist Dmitri Sitkovsetsky, will be the first Soviet emigre musicians returning to the Soviet Union to play at the invitation of government officials, Davidovich’s manager, Kevin Hassler, said in New York on Monday.

Davidovich and Sitkovsetsky were invited by the Soviet state concert agency Goskoncert to play two concerts in December in memory of Davidovich’s husband, Julian Sitkovsetsky, who died of cancer in 1958 at age 32.

Davidovich was to have played with the Pacific Symphony at the Orange County Performing Arts Center Dec. 14 and 15, but the orchestra has released her from her contract and expects to name a replacement sometime today.

Dmitri Sitkovsetsky left the Soviet Union for the United States in 1977. Davidovich left a year and a half later. Both applied for and received government permission to emigrate. Other Soviet musicians well-known in the West include violinist Gidon Kremer, who retains his Soviet passport, and cellist and conductor Mstislav Rostropovich, who has been stripped of his Soviet citizenship.

Vladimir Horowitz, who returned to play in Moscow and Leningrad in April, 1986, after an absence of 41 years, is “not considered an emigre,” Hassler said, “because he left the Soviet Union as a very young man and simply never returned after the effects of the Soviet revolution were felt.”

American Ballet Theatre artistic director Mikhail Baryshnikov, who defected from the Soviet Union in 1974, was invited in February, 1987, to dance with the Bolshoi Ballet, according to his manager, Edgar Vincent. But he has yet to go there.

Davidovich and Sitkovsetsky’s first concert will be Dec. 19 with the Moscow Philharmonic. He will play concertos by Shostakovich and Prokofiev, and she will play Rachmaninoff’s “Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini.” On Dec. 28, Sitkovsetsky and Davidovich will appear with the Borodin String Quartet. Both programs will be broadcast in the Soviet Union.