Eugene Fodor is a 24-year-old American who plays the violin. He has just shared top honors with two Soviet musicians in the Tchaikovsky Violin Competition, thus becoming the first person from the Western world to prove to the Russians that their young violinists no longer reign supreme. The judges declined to award a first prize —a gold medal—and instead gave second prizes—silver medals—to Fodor along with Ruben Agaranyan and Rusudan Gvasaliya. The Soviet news agency Tass said that no first prize was awarded because none of the finalists succeeded in performing evenly at all stages of the difficult competition.

Fodor (no relation to the prolific travel writer) has a different tale to tell. Eleven of the 19 judges were Russians. The two Soviet winners were students of David Oistrakh and Leonid Kogan, who both served on the jury. It takes courage and confidence for a non-Russian to even enter the competition, for, since it started in 1958, few ‘outsiders” have even been placed in the violin section. Not to be placed in the world’s top competitive event can do positive harm to the career of a young musician.

Eugene Fodor does not lack confidence. ‘Did I think I would win? Yeah, I guess so. Let’s put it this way: I knew that if I felt well and if I played my best there would be no problem with placing

From the first moment of the first eliminating round he knew he felt well and was playing at his best. “First I had to play one of three Bach unaccompanied sonatas, and I chose C Minor. The audience response to that came over pretty strongly. Then I had to play the first movement of one of Mozart’s five concertos. I chose the last. The audience response to that was, well, nice. It has appeal, that piece. It is terribly difficult to play well.

“Then I had to play two of Paganini’s 24 Caprices, and I chose the two most difficult: No. 17 because it has a finger octave section in rapid tempo and No. 24 because it is a summing up of all the pyrotechnics of the previous 237

After he had finished No. 17 the rhythmic hand-clapping started; after No. 24 the audience response was “unbelievable, so unbelievable it was funny;’ Fodor says. “My pianist walked on to accompany me with Tchaikovsky’s Valse-Scherzo, and the audience would not stop clapping. She sat thee looking terribly serious and the judges sat there looking amazed

At the end of the Valse-Scherzo, lgor Oistrakh, David’s son, left his seat in the audience and followed him to his dressing room. ‘He said to me in a thick Russian accent, ‘It was perfect:” Some 50 other people also left their seats and rushed backstage to congratulate him. The rest of the audience had to sit and wait until the fuss died down before competitor number 12, the Russian woman who was eventually to share the top award with him, could have her go.

 At the second round, one of the pieces was Slonimsky’s Introduction and Toccata. “I received the Slonimsky two months before the competition. It was handwritten so I assumed it had been written specially for the competition. It was not until after the competition that I realized that it had been published some time before.

The finals were held over six evenings-two performers each night. But then there were 3 finalists so one night there had to be three performers. Fodor was the third performer, and the Moscow metro closes down at 12:30. Anyone who misses it is stranded until 6 a.m. -taxis being what they are in Moscow. Fodor took the stage a~ 11:30, fearing that half the audience would have to leave after his first piece in order to get home. He chose to play the Tchaikovsky violin concerto first because it was, after all, a Tchaikovsky competition. The audience, to a man, stayed to hear his rendering of the Sibelius concerto.

He had to wait several days for the results. He went shopping and sight-seeing and had a date or two. “I had the television on in my room as I was getting dressed to go to hear the results. I don’t understand a word of Russian, I just had it on.. then I heard my name mentioned. I couldn’t understand what they were saying, but I thought.. well, I must have won something."