Renato Vinicius wrote:

>I recently heard about stories involving Ivo Pogorelich and some
>competitions in which he had failed and about a controverse in one of them
>with Martha Argerich.  Could somebody tell me these stories or say if they
>are true or not?

Renato undoubtedly had in mind the 1980 Warsaw Chopin International Piano
Competition.  Here is the gist of the story:

A few weeks after winning his first prize at the 1980 Montreal
International Competition, Pogorelich entered the Warsaw competition
where he was eliminated from the finals for extremely eccentric playing.
A New York Times article at the time reported Pogorelich "banging out the
pianissima and whispering the fortissima." (This quotation is from memory,
not an exact one).  The American pianist Eugene List, who had been on the
jury for that competition, told me in 1983 that Pogorelich was totally
undisciplined.  However, Martha Argerich, another jury member, was
impressed by Pogorelich and resigned from the jury in protest again
Ivo's elimination.

The protest resignation of such a high-profile juror catapulted Pogorelich
into international fame and launched his career.  It also practically
removed from the scene the name of Dang Thai Son, the winner not just of
the first prize and gold medal but also of most other special awards of
that competition.  It obliterated the fact that Margtha Argerich sent Dang
Thai Son a telegramme congratulating him for his victory and assuring him
that he was also her choice.  Eugene List told me that he favoured Dang
Thai Son for his exceptionally beautiful and poetic musicianship.

That, in brief, was the Pogorelich-Argerich controversy.  A few years back,
in a broadcast on the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, the commentator
Kenneth Winters remarked that the controversy was fading away and with it
Ivo Pogorelich, whereas Dang Thai Son was being recognized, somewhat late
but "by no means too late." I once attended a recital by Son, where an
ecstatic member of the audience confided that if that was how music would
be played in heaven, then she would not mind dying to get there!

Best wishes,

D.T. Phi