In Russia, Elisso Virsaladze is regarded as one of the world's best pianists, but in the United States she's a nobody.
"It doesn't disturb me," says Virsaladze, 50, who plays Chopin's E Minor Concerto tonight, Saturday and Sunday with the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra and guest conductor Eri Klas.
"Western artists had the same problem in Russia. They went there and nobody knew about them. I am just delighted that now Russians who want to can live in New York and have careers in Europe."
Virsaladze's manner -- shy, gentle and delicate -- contrasts with the way she plays, which is temperamental, impulsive and powerful. But she takes a long, patient view of making a career. This may be because there's a long tradition of music in her family; or perhaps it's because she's encountered roadblocks in her effort to have an American, as well as European, career.
Although she is of Georgian descent and was born in Tbilisi, Virsaladze's first teacher was her grandmother, Anastasia Davidovna, one of the great teachers in the Russian tradition. When her grandmother shipped her to Moscow for further study, she went to the great Heinrich Neuhaus, the teacher of Richter, Gilels and Zak. Then, after Neuhaus' death, she studied with Zak himself.
Although she was the youngest high-prize winner in the 1962 Tchaikovsky Competition, at the age of 19, and first-prize winner two years later in Germany's Schumann Competition, the vagaries of the Cold War prevented Virsaladze from accepting invitations to perform in the United States until 1977.
Enthusiastic offers to return the next season would have been accepted, but for the resumption of the Cold War after the Soviet Union's invasion of Afghanistan. So it is that Virsaladze is only now building a career in the this country.
But her views about career are hardly typical. For one thing, she despises making records, which are the backbone of modern classical music careers.
"It's a problem -- it makes me sick," says Virsaladze, whose heretofore quiet demeanor now begins to resemble the way she plays the piano. "Records are unchanging things -- they're made in a factory. And it bothers me that young artists sometimes sound like records -- they no longer change from recital to recital.
"A performance should be . . ."
Virsaladze struggles to find the right English word; her fingers scamper across the table.
"Yes, a living thing!" she exclaims.
Virsaladze's views about recording are reinforced by her own records. Her studio recording of Chopin's 24 Etudes is wonderfully assured and exciting playing, but her second recording -- an unedited transcript of an actual concert in Paris -- is stupendous, alive with passion and live-or-die pianistic risks.
Virsaladze also refuses to play concerts too frequently, which is why she has been able to maintain her individuality.
"When you play 100 concerts a year -- one day in Tokyo, one in New York and another in Munich -- you have to play like a machine," she says. "It's hard to say 'no' to things that will compromise you in this 'business of music,' but only if you're absolutely fanatic about it can you survive as an artist."
PLAYING CHOPIN
What: Elisso Virsaladze plays Chopin with the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra
When: 8:15 tonight and tomorrow night; 3 p.m. Sunday
Where: Meyerhoff Hall
Tickets: $13-$45
Call: 783-8000