{"id":2266,"date":"2022-05-16T15:27:25","date_gmt":"2022-05-16T19:27:25","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/uq\/?p=2266"},"modified":"2022-05-16T15:27:28","modified_gmt":"2022-05-16T19:27:28","slug":"remembering-lexo","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/uq\/2022\/05\/remembering-lexo.html","title":{"rendered":"Remembering Lexo"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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When I filed my eulogy <\/a><\/strong>for Alexander Toradze, one of the emails I received was from David Hyslop. The former CEO of the Minnesota Orchestra, he knew Lexo at home in Minneapolis and on tour. Hyslop remembered Toradze as a great talent \u2013 and an even \u201cgreater person.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I was reminded, after a fashion, of a malicious review filed by a colleague during my New York Times<\/em> tenure in the late 1970s. This was someone who loathed a Toradze performance. His review declared Toradze\u2019s career over \u2013 he was a pianist no longer in demand by audiences or orchestras, the Times\u2019<\/em> readers were informed. When I next encountered my colleague, I felt the need to inform him that I knew Alexander Toradze rather well, and that he was an \u201cexceptional human being.\u201d My colleague replied in a casual sing-song: \u201cI\u2019m sure that\u2019s true.\u201d This ended our exchange with the glib sentiment: So what? — it doesn\u2019t matter. But it did matter, and it does. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

In Fort Worth, in the wake of the 1977 Cliburn Competition, the local public TV station produced a thirty-minute film: “Lexo.” <\/a><\/strong>This was before the era of soundbites. The film ends with a nearly complete performance of Stravinsky\u2019s\u00a0Three Movements from Petrushka<\/em>, documenting\u00a0an interpretation so vividly characterized that more than a few pianists regard it is a benchmark. But the glimpses afforded of Lexo\u2019s interaction with his host family, including two young children, are every bit as memorable. At the age of 25, the Toradze personality \u2013 its onslaught of warmth and wellbeing — was already as striking as Toradze the pianist.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In the wake of Lexo\u2019s death, recorded concert performances are freshly turning up on youtube. One is the Tchaikovsky B-flat minor concerto<\/strong>, <\/a>with David Atherton and the Hong Kong Philharmonic. This is from 1990 \u2013 the same year as the Prokofiev Third<\/a><\/strong> my son Bernie has flagged. Lexo\u2019s mettlesome intellect is documented in fraught interaction with a volcano of feeling. It would be a pale understatement to characterize the old warhorse as re-animated by such inhabitation; Tchaikovsky can barely hang on.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

In the irreplaceable living room of Lexo\u2019s South Bend home \u2013 a room filled with memorabilia and photographs and above all with memories \u2013 I two days ago discovered an album of photographs of his mother. She was a famous Georgian film actress. (His father was the pre-eminent Georgian composer.) Liana is smiling and proud. She has her arm around young Lexo, perhaps ten years old \u2013 and his arm is around her. Lexo\u2019s countenance also evinces love and pride. But he is not smiling. One clearly senses something exceptional about the object of his mother\u2019s high regard \u2013 an autonomy of spirit, a maturity beyond his years.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

How Lexo left his mother, father, and sister in 1983 is a story many times told. Touring with a Moscow orchestra in Spain, he was not permitted to perform. He had not been allowed to visit the United States, where he already had an excited and appreciative audience, for four years. Discovering himself in a Madrid restaurant without an escort, he impulsively sought asylum. A recent\u00a0Russian posting<\/a><\/strong>\u00a0quotes a newspaper interview from 2013 in which he says, \u201cI never intended to leave anywhere, let alone run away . . . I broke down. It\u2019s hard to believe, but it was a completely unprepared situation. I was thirty-one years old.\u201d The Toradze odyssey, complex and unfathomable, may partly be read as evidence of the human cost of the Cold War.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The night he would die in his sleep, Lexo texted a smiling selfie with cigar to Vladimir Feltsman, a friend of many decades. He was in an expansive mood. Notwithstanding a recent heart episode, he was feeling robust. He had just been told that his cardiac readings were strong. He was actually on the mend from a period of poor health.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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A related blog: Toradze on Stravinsky  <\/a><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

When I filed my eulogy for Alexander Toradze, one of the emails I received was from David Hyslop. The former CEO of the Minnesota Orchestra, he knew Lexo at home in Minneapolis and on tour. Hyslop remembered Toradze as a great talent \u2013 and an even \u201cgreater person.\u201d  I was reminded, after a fashion, of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-2266","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-uncategorized","7":"entry","8":"has-post-thumbnail"},"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2QLHN-Ay","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/uq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2266","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/uq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/uq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/uq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/uq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2266"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/uq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2266\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2283,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/uq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2266\/revisions\/2283"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/uq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2266"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/uq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2266"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/uq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2266"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}