The cellist was "exceptional," declared Boston Symphony Concertmaster Joseph Silverstein. The pianist played "as well as anybody need ever play," said Conductor Erich Leinsdorf. The soloists who won these praises from such rigorous judges were not big concert stars but virtually unknown American students: New York City's Stephen Kates, 23, and Los Angeles' Misha Dichter, 20, both fresh from winning silver medals at the Third International Tchaikovsky Competition in Moscow.
America's other Tchaikovsky prizewinners—Sopranos Jane Marsh, 24, and Veronica Tyler, 29, and Bass Simon Estes, 28—had already made impressive postcontest showings...
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