Alexei sultanov biography of michael

For a few months in 1989, a teenager named Alexei Sultanov was perhaps the most celebrated — and certainly the most discussed — young pianist in the world.

He had come to the United States from the rapidly disintegrating Soviet Union to play in the Van Cliburn International Piano Competition in Ft.

Worth. The author Joseph Horowitz, who heard him there, called him “a veritable wild child from Tashkent, in the shadow of the Himalayas.” Sultanov’s playing was fast, urgent, hyper-emotional and breathtakingly loud: He pounded the keyboard so hard in performance of Liszt’s “Mephisto Waltz No.

1” that a string groaned and snapped.

And yet, on June 11, 1989, Sultanov was awarded the top prize from America’s wealthiest classical music competition: $15,000 in cash, a recital at Carnegie Hall, a recording contract, and sponsored tours throughout the United States and Europe.

Sultanov mounted the stage as though he were in a “Rocky&