It wasn't what I heard at the Tchaikovsky Competition this summer in Moscow that made me worry about musical standards in Russia. It is what I smelled.

Imagine sitting in the Meyerhoff to listen to the world's best young pianists and the entire hall smelling as the bathrooms used to at Memorial Stadium on a sultry August afternoon.

The Tchaikovsky - which includes contests in piano, violin, cello and voice - is held every four years to honor Russia's greatest composer. For pianists, particularly, it is the world's most prestigious contest.

But Russia is beset by the precipitous fall of the ruble, by miners' strikes now several months' long and by the possibility that some of its nuclear weapons may turn up on the black market. Music does not occupy a high place on the agenda of Russian President Boris Yeltsin. And the plumbing systems of Moscow's major concert halls, which date back to the Stalin era, were clearly not equipped to accommodate packed audiences that cheered their favorites day after day for more than three weeks last month.

There is still extraordinary enthusiasm for classical music in this decaying country, where clocks are often wrong and telephone conversations are frequently terminated by inexplicable buzzing. Such enthusiasm probably explains why - when nothing else works - Russian music training continues to be perhaps the world's best. The final rounds of each contest of the Tchaikovsky were dominated by Russians; except for a Japanese coloratura soprano who took first place in the women's vocal contest, Russians won every first prize.

Russia's domination of the piano competition was almost total and included first-prize winner Denis Matsuev among six of the eight finalists. It is the piano contest that is the most celebrated and most closely watched of international music competitions. American Van Cliburn was rocketed to fame in 1958 by victory in the first competition, and the Tchaikovsky has served almost equally to launch Russians such as Vladimir Ashkenazy and Mikhail Pletneyev, as well as the occasional American (Misha Dichter) and even an Irishman (Barry Douglas).

But the distrust, dissension and economic failures troubling the rest of Russian society were apparent even in this fabled piano contest. In fact, the results of the piano competition created controversy, which raged among the audiences and made newspaper headlines.

A letter displayed on a bulletin board in the Moscow Conservatory, where most of the competition took place, was much discussed by audiences on the four evenings in which each of the eight finalists had to perform two concertos. While the letter approved of the audience favorite, 21-year-old Englishman Freddy Kempf, it referred to the other finalists as the "soul-dead seven."

Noting that four of the eight finalists were students of Sergei Dorensky, one of five Russians on the 14-member jury, the writer satirically suggested changing the name of the competition from Tchaikovsky to Dorensky.

In Izvestia, columnist Svetlana Antonova asserted the piano competition "had completely lost its international prestige and was being ignored by the rest of the world."

She blamed this loss of prestige partly on the failure of the Tchaikovsky Competition to pay its annual dues of $1,200 to the International Federation of Music Competitions and its subsequent loss of accreditation. Antonova also reminded readers of the "scandalous" 1994 competition, in which no first prizes at all were awarded in piano, violin and cello.

"The rest of the world still has not forgotten that the purpose of the competition is ideological - to show that Russians are still the best musicians in the world," Antonova claimed.

"What young professional musician," she continued, "would want to come to a competition in which the conditions were awful, in which the results might be rigged and in which no first prize might be offered?"

An editorial in the Commercial Observer criticized a selection process that failed to send jurors abroad to audition contestants or to videotape applicants - a common practice at other international competitions. The consequence of this failure, the Commercial Observer insisted, were "foreign competitors who could be called 'musical tourists' instead of musicians and whose performances could be compared to those of dancers in galoshes."

Further controversy erupted during the second round when Alexei Sultanov, the somewhat eccentric but unfailingly exciting first-prize winner of 1989's prestigious Van Cliburn Competition in Fort Worth, Texas, failed to make the finals. Sultanov's elimination was blamed on Dorensky, who - according to sources on the jury - said the popular pianist was guilty of "bad taste, gimmickry, foppishness and pandering to the public."

The public airing of such criticism obviously affected Dorensky, who confessed to an American reporter that "everybody in Moscow hates me."

That was scarcely an understatement. It was difficult to find anyone in Moscow's musical circles with anything good to say about Dorensky, one of the most powerful figures in the conservatory. This was not a matter of sour grapes because of the success of Dorensky's students. Such hostility was not directed at Natalia Shakhovskaya, four of whose students - including the first-prize winner - made the finals of the cello competition.

The day after the announcement of the winners, Dorensky received a phone call from a man who identified himself as a member of the Mafia and who threatened Dorensky if he did not immediately resign from the conservatory's faculty.

By the time of the awards ceremony July 1, the audience in the concert hall began to resemble a cheering section for Kempf, who received third prize. Every mention of his name was greeted by prolonged rhythmic clapping and stamping, making it impossible for the ceremony to continue.

It was easy to understand why the Russian audiences adored Kempf. On four consecutive evenings the audience was subjected to thundering renditions of concertos by Tchaikovsky, Rachmaninoff, Liszt and Prokofiev by the other seven finalists. Kempf's serious, thoughtful and poetic playing stood out like an oasis.

But it was hard to argue with the jury's decision. Of the four top-prize winners, Kempf was the only pianist who lost control - if only momentarily - of each concerto. And his approach to Rachmaninoff and Tchaikovsky was that of a water colorist, when they are canvasses that demand oils. Matsuev deserved first prize: His artistry, while as fresh as Kempf's, was more natural; his command of the instrument was complete; and his pleasure in playing the piano was infectious.

While some of the Russian criticism of the 1998 Tchaikovsky seemed valid - the fifth-, sixth-, seventh- and eighth-prize winners would not have made the competition's finals in earlier years - the quality of the four top-prize winners was comparable to that of previous winners and superior to those of last summer's Cliburn finalists.

Moreover, taking the Tchaikovsky's organizers to task for their selection process seems misguided, if not unfair. A competition that cannot afford adequate plumbing is unlikely to be able to afford to send jurors, as well as videotape equipment, all over the globe.

And as for the inferiority of the foreign pianists to the Russians at the Tchaikovsky - that's been a fact of life at international competitions for more than 50 years. Whether or not Russian superiority at the keyboard will persist into the next century is a question that probably depends upon the future of the Russian economy.

For now, it seems safe to say that when the most talented Russians sit down to play, everything's going to continue to come up roses.

Pub Date: 7/19/98