The first day Bella Davidovich sat down to practice the piano in her new apartment in Queens, N.Y., a neighbor slipped a note under the door asking her not to play so loudly. Winner of the International Chopin Competition, faculty member at the Moscow Conservatory, Deserving Artist of the Soviet Union, Davidovich was unknown to her new neighbors. Her nonpolitical departure from the U.S.S.R. had occurred without benefit of an international incident and the subsequent career-boosting headlines. Adding injury to insult, Davidovich had been mugged just after her arrival in New York City; unfamiliar with such American customs, she had resisted...
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