Zack Winestine wrote:

>Can anyone out there give me any information about the Russian Pianist
>Yakov Zak? I understand that during the 1950's (when he was not heard
>outside of the USSR) there were rumors that he was the equal of Richter,
>and that he did finally perform some concerts in the US in the (early?)
>1960's.  I have a dynamite recording of his performance of the Prokofiev
>2nd Piano Concerto (a mono recording with Kurt Sanderling conducting the
>USSR State Radio Orchestra released on LP by Artia).
>
>Whatever happened to him?  And are there any other recordings of his
>performances?

Jakov Izrrailevich Zak (Nov 20, 1913-June 27, 1976) was indeed one
of Russia s outstanding pianists for decades, and a People's Artist of
the USSR He was also one of the most prominent teachers at the Moscow
Conservatory until his death from natural causes, which can be attributed
to the stress he endured, in the same year, over the defection to the west
of his student, Youri Egorov.  Though I could go into considerable detail
about this remarkable artist, suffice it to say that he was a student of
Neuhaus in the 1930s, won the Chopin Competition in Warsaw in 1937, and
played in the United States twice, in 1965 and agian in 1967.  He made
numerous recordings for Melodiya.  Among his students were Mogilevski,
Virsaldzhe, Timofyeev, Bakk, and Petrov.  He also sometimes played with
Gilels in two piano recitals.  A connoisseur of Rennaiassance art, Zak
would often frame his interpretive ideas, for his students, in metaphors
that he drew from painting.  For example, once, while teaching the Liszt
sonata, he said:(and I translate from the Russian); "In the recapitulation
of the Liszt sonata the principle theme leads the lower register, and it
must swim out of the darkness just as a face emerges from the patina of a
Rembrandt- thus, play it dolce, and take care to bring to it something of
the exquisite freshness, detail and originality, too, of both the drawings
and the colors of Botticelli." Upon Youri's defection to the west in 1976,
Zak was placed under what essentially amounted to house arrest, though it
was not called that.  I know this personally from Youri, with whom I shared
digs for a while in Amsterdam.  The Soviet authorities suspected that Zak
had some complicity in Youri's decision to flee while on tour in Italy.
The stress and pressure proved too great and eventually fatal for the
frail Zak, and he collapsed under the strain.

John Bell Young