Acclaimed Russian pianist Mikhail Pletnev made a brief appearance in a Thai court on Monday to maintain his innocence to charges of raping a teenage boy and said the fact that he had returned to the country showed he was a man of honor.
Pletnev was arrested in the resort town of Pattaya on July 5 on suspicion of raping a 14-year-old Thai boy.
He was released on bail and permitted to leave Thailand on condition that he report back on Sunday, July 18, with police saying he was not a flight risk.
In a statement in English issued Monday, Pletnev thanked the Pattaya court for letting him take part in a concert in Macedonia.
"As publicized in the news media throughout the world, some people in authority and others expressed their views that I would never return to Thailand. I hope everybody now accepts that I am a man of honor and that I am a man of my word," he said.
The court has not set a trial date. Pletnev said he would return for the next bail hearing in 12 days and would assist the police investigation in every way.
"I say again these allegations are not true. I also state, contrary to media reports, that during the police search of my home, nothing connected with the allegations — no photographs or other visual material — was found in the computer," he said.
Pletnev's lawyers will now ask the court for permission for him to leave Thailand for a tour with his Russian National Orchestra, Russian Consul Andrei Dvornikov said, Interfax reported.
The tour will start in Poland in mid-August and will include concerts in Moscow from Sept. 6 to 12, orchestra spokeswoman Svetlana Chaplygina told Interfax.
Pattaya, a popular tourist destination 150 kilometers from Bangkok, has been known for its nightlife and sex trade since the Vietnam War, partly because of its proximity to a U.S. Air Force base at the time. These days, there is a big Russian presence.
Pletnev, 53, an award-winning pianist and conductor of the Russian National Orchestra, would face up to 20 years in prison if convicted.
He founded the Russian National Orchestra, whose recording of Sergei Prokofiev's "Peter and the Wolf" and Beintus' "Wolf Tracks," conducted by Kent Nagano and narrated by Sophia Loren, Bill Clinton and Mikhail Gorbachev, received a 2004 Grammy Award. In 2005, he won a Grammy Award for his own arrangement of Prokofiev's "Cinderella."
(Reuters, MT)