MUSIC

Soviet defector and pianist Alexander Toradze, who will be performing with the National Symphony Orchestra in Pasadena on Saturday and in Costa Mesa on Monday, has received several invitations to perform in his homeland but will not do so until he is convinced that glasnost is a permanent fixture in the country. Toradze said Wednesday he has an official invitation from the first secretary of the Communist Party in his home republic of Georgia, as well as personal invitations from musicians including Yuri Temirkanov, conductor of the Leningrad Philharmonic, and Dmitri Kitaenko, conductor of the Moscow State Philharmonic. “It would be nice to think that an invitation is (Soviet officials’) way of apologizing (for the pain and suffering of Soviet artists in the past), but that is not enough,” the pianist said. “We need to see that (the Soviet Union’s new ways, which have included an invitation to defector-dancer Natalia Makarova, who has returned to Leningrad to dance with the Kirov next week) is not a temporary thing. . . . I hope that my return will sometime happen. But it will not be before I get my soul and my mind assured that they mean what they say and do what they mean.” Toradze would be assured, he said, by “a relative happiness of the Soviet people,” which he feels has not been present in the past.