›› 50-YEAR NOTES

05/01/08

Daniel Pollack, now a USC Thornton School of Music professor, played his way to the finals of the first Tchaikovsky Piano Competition in Moscow at the height of the Cold War in 1958. Although a fellow American, Van Cliburn, famously won the event, Pollack also received a huge career boost. Pollack, profiled this year on NPR’s Weekend Edition, revealed that he nearly dropped out when he discovered he had prepared the wrong repertoire. “After a night of terror, I went to Dmitri Shostakovich, then-chairman of the competition, and said I wished to resign,” Pollack told NPR. “But he simply would not hear of it,” afraid that it would provoke an incident.