Music: Cello Victory

Almost all the seats in the Salle Gaveau were empty, but the atmosphere in the elegant Paris concert hall was tense. Behind the scenes, 38 nervous young men and women from a score of countries polished their bulky cellos, flexed their hands, and spat on calloused fingers. In the balcony sat 14 distinguished cellists, including France’s Pierre Fournier, Britain’s Sir John Barbirolli, Russia’s Mstislav Rostropovich. It was the Concours International Pablo Casals 1957, organized to honor the great cellist, and it proved to be a surprisingly thrilling East-West match.

Looking at times like embattled warriors, at times like impassioned lovers, the cellists played either part of Bach’s Suite No. 5 for Unaccompanied Cello or the first movement of Boccherini’s Concerto in B Flat. The Russians displayed remarkable technical facility but were cold, while some of the Soviet satellite entries laid it on with cloying warmth.

The first round eliminated all but 15 players. The second (Marin Marais’s La Folia or the second movement of Kodaly’s Sonata, Op. 8) cut them down to four. In the finals, first prize and 350,000 francs ($833) went to the U.S.’s Leslie Parnas, 25, first cellist with the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra. The Russian entries came in third and fourth, while a West German girl took second place. Cried Maestro Casals: “That was real music, the most remarkable contest I was ever present at.” Said Cellist Parnas, who soloed with the St. Louis Symphony at 15: “I don’t like to say that I beat the Russians because that was not the issue.”