Word: istomin
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...Pianist Istomin feels that he arrived on the U.S. musical scene at an ideal time. The son of Russian-born professional singers, he studied at the Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia under Pianist Rudolf Serkin. The U.S. was then benefiting from the wartime influx of great European artists. Says Istomin: "Every time I heard men like Rubinstein. Artur Schnabel, Horowitz, or Bruno Walter. I felt as though artistically I had robbed the city bank of New York. We were a very lucky generation...
Controlled Chaos. Talented Eugene Istomin invested his pelf wisely, played with both the Philadelphia Orchestra and the New York Philharmonic-Symphony when he was barely 17. He favored the music of Bach, Beethoven and Mozart rather than the showier romantic pieces that appeal to most young pianists, and he developed a style marked by poise, serenity and the avoidance of bravura for bravura's sake. "Of late we have heard a good many pianists who came to us with enormous reputations sworn to on a stack of phonograph records," wrote the New York Herald Tribune's Paul Henry...
...Istomin started his musical globetrotting six years ago after appearing at the Bach Festival at Prades. France, under Cellist Pablo Casals. ("Casals stands for everything that is noble and sublime in music.") Since then. Bachelor Istomin has toured six continents, constantly sandwiching practice hours into a controlled chaos of press receptions and cocktail parties. The experience, he thinks, has been artistically maturing...
Paying a Debt. "They're suspicious of us culturally." he says, referring to people he met on his recent ANTA tour of the Far East. "But at the same time they're pathetically anxious to hear what we have to offer." In Japan in particular. Istomin found, audiences were attracted by the openness and spontaneity of Western music...
When will he settle down to a calmer life? Not for several more years, thinks Istomin. He is booked for concert tours through 1959. "It's a duty," he says. "The technical demands of radio, television and the movies and the accumulated knowledge of the European artists have produced a generation of American musicians with superb technical equipment and promising artistry. We have an obligation to pass that on to other parts of the world. It's a way of paying back what we've borrowed...