from what would have been the Chernobyl tour, but the orchestra is keeping its Soviet prospects alive by sponsoring the Moscow ensemble.
The 8 p.m. concert will feature the local debuts of cellist Natalia Gutman and her husband, violinist Oleg Kagan, in the Brahms Double Concerto. The program will be conducted by Yevgeny Svetlanov and will include Glinka's Kamarinskaya Overture and Rachmaninov's Symphony No. 2.
Except for the fact that all the performers may be heard on records, musical life in the Soviet Union virtually dropped from American experience during the years of the cultural freeze that began in the Carter presidency, when the United States boycotted the Moscow Olympics over the Soviet presence in Afghanistan and both nations failed to renew the cultural exchange treaty. In the silence that followed, new artists emerged in the Soviet Union, players known in the West only by brief news announcements about international prizes.
Gutman is one of those. Born in 1942 in Kazan, she showed her musical gifts early and moved 450 miles west to Moscow to enter the Central Conservatory. She began her studies with Galina Kosolupova and spent four years with Mstislav Rostropovich.
By the time she was 25, she had won four major European competitions, and then topped that by winning the Tchaikovsky Competition in 1967.
The dark-haired, intense cellist has toured extensively since then and, as the Moscow Orchestra made its way across Canada this week, she spoke a little about her career in an interview from Ottawa.
"My first profound musical experience came in Moscow when I heard Isaac Stern play," she said. "I think I tried to model myself on his playing. Then, of course, when I studied with Rostropovich I could only admire what he did."
