A SILVER LINING

Yakov Kasman’s road to glory is paved with silver--as in the silver medal at the 1997 Van Cliburn International Piano Competition. But it wasn’t always so.

The Russian pianist, who will play Beethoven’s “Emperor” Concerto on Saturday with the Pacific Symphony at Irvine Meadows Amphitheatre, struggled against punishing adversity before finding his way to the West and this latest victory.

Four years ago, Kasman was en route to the Gina Bachauer Competition in Salt Lake City, elated at the prospect of a win there launching his international career. But after a Russian customs official at the Moscow airport examined his passport, told him it was illegal and tore it up, Kasman was stranded.

“It was a terrible day,” he recalled by phone from Moscow, groaning at his misfortune. “On the spot I lost my air tickets and passport. My parents [became] ill after learning what happened.”

In a haze of crushing disappointment, he wandered back to his Moscow home and an empty calendar. With the Tchaikovsky Competition going on, he decided to attend it rather than succumb to bitterness.

There he met Tatiana Svechkova, a musicologist working as a radio broadcaster. Their subsequent romance led to marriage and turned what had begun as disaster into the happiest of circumstances.

Kasman’s musical odyssey had been a contradiction. On one hand, he grew up as beneficiary of a system--the ‘60s Soviet Union--that offered superb musical training. On the other, that system imposed harsh penalties that could cancel out its benefits.

At 20, as he was preparing for a major concert career, the Red Army drafted him--no ifs, ands or buts.

“Throughout that first year of my service,” he said, “I had no piano. I thought I would lose my musical quality. Instead there were a lot of potatoes to scrub, floors to clean. It was very cold, no sleep, no piano, no music.”

Yet those two years did not deter him. “I started to play better, afterward,” he said. “Maybe it was the school of life.”

The pianist has since won several prizes, most recently the Cliburn Competition in Fort Worth. The route to a performing career for him, as well as most others today, is such competitions. Kasman concedes that only a “near genius,” like Evgeny Kissin, can succeed without the competition venue.

“It is the one real way to the stage,” he said. “Before these contests I was a pianist in my room.”

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What Kasman loves only slightly less than performing for audiences is teaching, something he has been doing recently at the Moscow Conservatory. In March, he will move his wife and 3-year-old daughter to the University of Alabama, where he has a one-year appointment as artist-in-residence.

Living in the United States will afford him easy access to single-concert bookings nationwide, as opposed to having to put together an elaborate tour with one event hinging on another.

Cliburn Competition official Sevan Melikyan said that persuading Kasman to give up his “ridiculously low-paying post in Moscow and a tiny, fifth-floor walk-up” was difficult. “There’s great pride there,” he said.

Still, Kasman talks only with enthusiasm for his new arrangement. Furthermore, he foresees no split between performing and teaching.

“I prefer them both,” he said, laughing. “Not 50-50, but 100-100. Seriously, though, music, not career, is the biggest thing in my life.”

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Pianist Yakov Kasman plays Beethoven’s Piano Concerto No. 5, “Emperor,” with conductor Carl St.Clair and the Pacific Symphony on Saturday at Irvine Meadows Amphitheatre, 8800 Irvine Center Drive. Also on the program: Rimsky-Korsakov’s “Procession of the Nobles,” Elgar’s Pomp and Circumstance March No. 1 and Handel’s “Royal Fireworks Music.” 8 p.m. $12-$54. (714) 755-5799.