Irina Popova Interview in Miami, Fla. (April 22, 1993)

CULTURAL EXCHANGE RUSSIAN VIRTUOSO, 15, STUNS PERFORMING ARTS STUDENTS WITH CLASSICAL STYLE

FORT LAUDERDALE — Before Irina Popova sat down to play the piano on Thursday, many of the Dillard High students in the audience scoffed.

“I want to know if all she’s open to is classical music,” said Kyle Woodard, a junior at the school. “I want to know if she can do gospel or jazz.”

But seconds after Popova, 15, a piano virtuoso from Russia, launched into Franz Liszt’s Etude in F-Minor, Woodard became enchanted.

His suspicion of the alien visitor melted under the spell of the melancholy melody and brooding chords.

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Woodard bowed his head reverently, then hopped to his feet and applauded when Popova rested her hands on her lap at the end of her performance.

“I’m not going to be able to touch a piano for the next three years,” said Woodard, a piano student in Dillard’s School of the Arts. “That was deep.”

Popova is a ninth-grader at Music School No.34 in Severodvinsk, a military and manufacturing city of 300,000 on a northern Russian bay that spills into the Arctic Ocean. Last year, she won Russia’s top competition for young pianists.

Just as Popova’s artistry opened the eyes of some Dillard students to the beauty of classical music, her first trip outside Russia has been an eye- opener on the wonders of America.

Popova arrived in Florida on Monday. She is staying for two weeks in Fort Lauderdale’s Coral Ridge neighborhood in a home that fronts a golf course. She went to the beach. She saw her first palm tree.

She visited the Coral Ridge Mall. She was awed by the absence of lines and abundance of goods on the shelves. Before she bought a pair of sneakers, she examined all the seams

“She went to J.C. Penney’s and T.J. Maxx and Byrons and this was like paradise to her,” said Helena Steiner-Hornsteyn, head of the South Florida Symphony Guild, which sponsored Popova’s visit.

Today, she is going to Disney World.

Thursday, the Dillard students prepared lunch for her: hamburgers, cheeseburgers, french fries, cole slaw and carrot cake. American food is “completely different,” she said, probing her cole slaw with a fork.

How did she like America? the students asked. American music?

“I really don’t know because I just got here,” she said, diplomatically.

Popova will play at the Broward Center for the Performing Arts at 8 p.m. Monday. For ticket information, call 761-5668.

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