“Out of a bleak world of enmity and despair had come a tall, blond, blue-eyed Texan who loved Russia and its music with humble reverence. He had old-fashioned courtliness, a touchingly eager manner, and a spectacular way with the piano that transported them to a half-remembered past. Music that depicted the many cruelties and brutalities of that past was not for him: the Russia he summoned up with his hands was a place of magnificence, beauty, and romance.”