Winning Soprano Almost Skipped Tchaikovsky

Former Anaheim resident Deborah Voight, who almost decided to skip the Tchaikovsky Competition, captured the hearts of the Russian music world and dazzled the judges who awarded her the gold medal today.

“I almost pulled out of the competition because I was so busy,” Voight, 29, said. “It’s really thrilling and overwhelming.”

The soprano and her competitors heard the news of her victory at about 2 a.m. at the Hall of Columns, where Voight clinched her medal with last-round selections from Verdi’s “Il Trovatore” and Tchaikovsky’s “Queen of Spades.”

Voight’s medal did not come as a surprise to the adoring fans who came to hear her in each of the competition’s three rounds.

“It was clear from the beginning,” said Irina K. Arkhipova, the chief judge of the competition. “The public kept coming back specifically to hear her.”

The judges took virtually no time in deciding that first place belonged indisputably to Voight, according to Arkhipova, the grande dame of Soviet opera, who said: “The jury was unanimous. She’s already a very accomplished vocalist. She can perform everywhere. Her voice is so lavish and beautiful.”

Voight decided at the last minute to stay in the contest, with the hope that a victory here would bring publicity and help fill her already impressive concert schedule.

What she did not expect was the immediate superstar status she acquired after singing her first piece. The audience had been asked not to applaud between selections, but “they forgot all about it and started clapping and bravoing as soon as I finished the first number,” Voight said.

Voight, who moved to New York in 1987, said that although she has won competitions in Italy and in Philadelphia and Washington over the past two years, the audience reaction here was incomparable.

“The fans have been absolutely, completely overwhelming,” she said. “I have never experienced anything like it. And they’re real autograph hounds. At one point I was almost frightened because everyone mobbed around me and pushed to try to get close to me.”

Voight was not the only American lavished with attention at the Ninth Tchaikovsky Competition, which featured pianists, cellists, violinists and vocalists.

Southern California pianist Stephen Naeson Prutsman, 29, received a fourth prize from the jury, and the audience clearly loved him the best. There was warm applause when the announcements were made about the gold, silver and bronze medal winners.

But when Prutsman’s name was announced, at 2:30 a.m., the hall was filled with “bravos.” The applause lasted at least twice as long as it did for the other prize winners. The lanky blond from Yucaipa stood up and looked stunned by the display of admiration.

“It’s not just the girls and women clapping because he is handsome,” Igor Khudoley, a Soviet composer, commented. “It’s the musicians applauding because they understand that he did some strange and maybe some incorrect things, but it is interesting, it is individual.”

Khudoley, some of whose works were performed by Prutsman and other competitors, said, “You would definitely go to his concerts again because he is a real musician.”

Pianist Kevin Kenner, 27, of San Diego, was also a crowd pleaser. He shared the bronze medal and third prize with two other contestants.

A Southern Californian placed well in the violin competition. David Chan, 17, who plays with the San Diego Symphony, won fifth prize.

Hans Choi, 31, a South Korean-born baritone who lives in New York, won first prize in the competition among male vocalists.

The violin competition was won by Akiko Suwanai, 18, of Japan. An American, Alyssa Park, 16, placed third, and two other Americans, Lucia Lin and Maria Bachman, placed six and seventh.

Gustav Rivinius, a West German, won first prize in the cello competition. Bion Tsang, an American, won third prize.

Soviet pianist Boris Berezovsky won the gold medal in the piano competition, wearing a tuxedo borrowed from a new American friend, Stephen Prutsman.