NONFICTION - Nov. 18, 1990

THE IVORY TRADE: Music and the Business of Music at the Van Cliburn International Piano Competition by Joseph Horowitz (Summit Books: $21.95; 290 pp.) . Former New York Times music critic Joseph Horowitz could well have titled his fascinating new book “The Politics of Music.” Horowitz reports on piano competitions and critiques performances, but at bottom, “The Ivory Trade” is an extended condemnation of the way the classical music world finds and promotes promising young pianists: by staging grueling, high-pressure, sports-like contests that appear to damage as many careers as they make. The Van Cliburn competition was born in 1958, months after Cliburn had won, to enormous international acclaim, the first Tchaikovsky piano competition in Moscow. A high-profile American counterpart no doubt seemed a good idea at the time--Horowitz cites the furious cultural race between the United States and the U.S.S.R. that began the previous year with Sputnik--but by the 1970s, the quadrennial, Fort Worth-based event had become as much an affair of money, social climbing and media stardom as of keyboard talent. Horowitz forcefully documents an opinion best expressed by cellist and teacher Gregor Piatigorsky: “It cannot be useful to discourage a hundred merely to encourage one.”