Soviet Pianist, 19, Debuts to Rave Reviews in U.S.

On the day he turned 19, pianist Evgeny Kissin listened to some tapes of his American recital debut, telephoned his father in Moscow and sat down at a piano to happily rip out some ragtime.

It was somewhat out of character for this serious young Russian who rarely smiles on stage, even while taking bows to thunderous applause. But he has reason to celebrate these days.

Since he made his American debut with the New York Philharmonic on Sept. 20, critics have been raving, saying Kissin is the kind of exciting, expressive pianist who rarely comes along.

That triumphant debut was followed by a recital at Carnegie Hall on Sept. 30 and another recital in Chicago on Oct. 7.

The music cognoscenti were eager to hear Kissin live, knowing of him mainly through his recordings and word of mouth.

The “Live at Carnegie Hall” record--Chopin, Liszt, Schumann and Prokofiev, plus four encores--was rushed into a Nov. 20 release as a two-CD set by RCA Victor.

Kissin, whose nickname is Genya, has recital debuts early next year in Amsterdam, Paris and Milan. He will play with the Boston Symphony at Tanglewood next summer, and when he returns next fall he is scheduled in Toronto, Dallas, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Montreal, Boston and New York. He already is booked for spring, 1992, by the Chicago Symphony and the Philadelphia Orchestra.

It is not always possible to tell whether a piano hotshot, playing partly by youthful instinct, will stay on top in adulthood or fade away. One knowledgeable, longtime observer of the classical music scene said that when one has as much talent as Kissin, a big career is confidently forecast.

Harold Schonberg, writing in The New York Times, said: “Musicians in general . . . tend to sound alike, products of an assembly line age, playing without charm or any apparent affection for the music under their fingers. Mr. Kissin has evolved his own style, and it is a style that looks back to a period when a controlled sonority, a singing line, power without banging, tempo modification and poetry were what the great Slavic Romantic pianists represented.”

“I never tried to make a special style in my playing,” Kissin says. “I want to understand, what did the composer intend.

“Basically, my teacher’s virtue is to develop what nature has given me and never to dictate or enforce her own stylistic views. She helps to guide and not let me go to extremes.”

He has had the same teacher, Anna Pavlovna Kantor, since he started at 6 at Moscow’s Gnessin School for Gifted Children. Actually, he took his first shot at playing the piano at age 2.

Kissin does not smile on stage, he says, “because I am inside of the music. I am trying to be inside before I come on stage, because it is necessary. Sometimes, after, I still feel inside the music.”

Sometimes, on stage, he will play something a bit differently than ever before.

“This is not really experimenting. This is an inspiration that comes,” he says. “If you really feel that you are totally in the music and the mood is right for that, it’ll just come out naturally. If you’re trying to do something different, very often it would come out artificially.

“It is like discovering something, like looking at a painting and, all of a sudden, seeing an aspect you never saw before and trying to bring out that beauty.”

As well as listening to recordings by Arthur Rubinstein and Soviet pianists, Kissin listened to Van Cliburn. In 1958, when Cliburn won the Tchaikovsky Competition in Moscow, Kissin says: “My mother was very young. Cliburn was really an idol for her and for people her age, so his records were in our house.”

Kissin has not needed to enter competitions. He made his debut at 10, gave his first solo recital at 11 and performed two Chopin concerts with the Moscow State Philharmonic at 12.

He intends to add to the composers whose music he plays. “I will play Beethoven, I hope Ravel and Debussy, Mussorgsky, more Schumann and Brahms.”

And Kissin’s world contains more than piano. “I’m interested in literature, history, politics, geography--Russian and the world.

“ Glasnost should be good for artists. I think politics makes a difference. Some artists have got the possibility to return like Rostropovich and Kremer and Davidovich and Ashkenazy. Soviet artists can move freer. I think it is normal that artists need new impressions. And I think the feeling of freedom is in the playing.”

Kissin mentions seven gifted Soviet pianists about his age who probably will be able to play in America now that cultural relations have been re-established between the two countries.

He was very nervous walking onto the Carnegie Hall stage, Kissin says, but not because of the recent Cold War. “When I was a little boy, it was my dream to play in Carnegie Hall, but I didn’t think too much about politics. Carnegie was a special name for me, like a legend.

“It was for me a new step in my fortune. I was nervous like never before.

He had not been as nervous before playing with the New York Philharmonic. “It is easier when you have an orchestra.”