Music: Barometers & Pianos

On the day before a concert, Pianist Byron Janis calls the weather bureau. A forecast of rain depresses him, chiefly because it depresses the piano, robbing it of the brilliance and agility that are the hallmarks of Janis' style. On the other hand, dry, clear weather of the kind that prevailed the evening he played with the Boston Symphony in Carnegie Hall last week is just what Janis needs. With the temperature in the 405, the moon radiant and the barometer steady, Janis played with feeling and virtuoso flair through Liszt's Piano Concertos Nos. 1 and 2. His piano sound positively glittered.

At 33, Janis is a member in good standing of the talented generation of pianists who have emerged in the U.S. since World War II: Van Cliburn, Gary Graffman, Eugene Istomin, Leon Fleisher, John Browning, Glenn Gould (a Canadian, but a product of the U.S. concert circuit). All of them are fine technicians—in Janis' case, he thinks, because he had Russian training. "To Russians, the important thing is first knowing the instrument and then having the emotion; Germans, on the other hand, feel that first you play the music and then the instrument."

Janis' playing, as a result, tends to be taut and full of nervous energy. In the coolly classic moods of a composer like Mozart, his performances can be erratic, but few pianists have Janis' flair for the big bravura pieces of Tchaikovsky or Liszt. Last week's concert, studded with thunderous chords and octaves, Zipperlike runs and occasionally a singing, tenoresque line, proved to be a wrist-breaking tour de force. When he came out to take a bow, looking as frail as Liszt himself, Pianist Janis seemed the least exhausted man in the house.

To develop a successful adult career, Pianist Janis had to overcome that most irksome of musical burdens—a reputation as a prodigy. His Russian-born parents brought him up in Pittsburgh, where his father, who owned a sporting-goods store, went by the name of Yanks, a contraction of the name Yankilevitch. When he was five, Byron started to play a toy xylophone like an old hand, soon afterward was playing piano on the radio. At 13, Byron Yanks, who shortly became Byron Janis, left home for good to study with a succession of teachers, finally becoming the only pupil of Vladimir Horowitz. He made his debut at 15 with the Pittsburgh Symphony, since then has been one of the most widely traveled of U.S. pianists.

Back from last fall's triumphant tour of Russia, he has concerts booked a year and a half in advance. But more than most young pianists, Janis knows the value of occasionally limiting his concert schedule. Sometimes, he believes, a pianist grows best when he leaves the concert hall alone.