AThe Vancouver Sun Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada Thursday, May 13, 1971 - Page 47
Soviet Chess Expert Has Three Careers by Alex Volkoff
When Robert Fischer of the United States meets Mark Taimanov of the Soviet Union across the chess table here he will be facing more than a chess grandmaster.
Besides being one of eight qualified for the quarter-finals of the world championships, Taimanov is also a professional concert pianist and a successful author.
He and Fischer will play a 10-round match at the University of B.C. graduate center, the first of the challengers' round matches. Winner of the series earn the right to play world champion Boris Spassky of the U.S.S.R.
Perhaps the first noticeable difference between the two players is their age. At 28 Fischer is 17 years younger than Taimanov but the Russian does not see this as an advantage.
“In a match of only 10 games, age doesn't make much of a difference,” he said in an interview Tuesday.
“It's like a short-distance race. If it's a question of endurance perhaps it would be significant in a 25-game match, but each age has its own advantage.”
Endurance is one thing Taimanov himself has never been short of.
At the same time that he has been active in the chess world he has found time to write three volumes of an encyclopedia on chess openings, give 60 concerts per year with his piano-playing wife and bring out “about 10 long-playing albums” of piano duets.
“Every year I spent five months giving concerts, five months traveling on chess tours and six months preparing for both.
“I have no idea how it all fits into one year, but somehow it does.”
He added he has always lived this way and cannot imagine any other tempo of life.
“I was writing the last volume of the encyclopedia during the U.S.S.R World match last April,” he said.
“All the other players would go back to the hotel to have dinner, rest, but I would go back and work on the book.”
Taimanov said he finds the combination of two professions complicates life but considers himself very fortunate at the same time.
“Both of these professions really require total devotion and I am happy to be successful in both.”
“If I meet reverses in one I always have the other to fall back on. If you are a one-sided person and meet a reverse the whole world falls apart.
Taimanov started learning to play music before he started playing chess.
“I attended a special music school as a young child and it was there I met my wife (Lubov Bruk). We had the same instructor and it was his idea that we play piano duets together.
“Since then we invariably play together at concerts.
“Wednesday my son graduated from the conservatory. He also studied with the same instructor. Our happiest days are when we play three pianos together.”
His introduction to chess came indirectly from his involvement in the music world.
“When I was 10 years old I was the hero of a film called Beethoven Concerto. The story was about a gifted musical child and how he was being brought up.
“Strangely enough I didn't play the piano in the film, but the violin.”
As payment for his role Taimanov received a grand piano. More important he became a child celebrity and received invitations to meet with many different groups.
“Once I was invited to a gather of Pioneers just after the opening of the Palace of Pioneers. (Pioneers are the Russian equivalent of boy scouts.)
“The palace was a place which provided the opportunity for young boys to exercise whatever talent they had.
“I was asked which activity I wanted to join and I decided the chess room appealed to me most.
“It was there that I came under the instruction of Mikhail Botvinnik, then chess champion of the U.S.S.R. and later world champion for 11 years.
“Even now I consider him a great authority and consulted him before I left on ways of tackling Fischer.”
“Fischer is one of the great chess players of the world so it has been a challenge and a pleasure preparing for him.”
Taimanov said in recent weeks he has been studying Fischer's style of play and personality. “After that it is just a matter of being rested and in good physical condition.”
Taimanov made little mention of it, but he has a third career if he wants to get into it.
Never one to let a spare moment go by he made good use of his chess and concert tours to gather impressions of foreign countries.
Several years ago he compiled them in a book entitled Encounters Abroad. One month after the first edition came out 30,000 copies had been sold.
