LENOX -- Thirty years ago Ivan Moravec was publicized as a “mystery pianist.” A famous advertisement featured a man seated at the piano, photographed in shadow so that you couldn't make out who he was, though the copy asked the provocative question, “Is this man the world's greatest pianist?”

A later advertisement announced the first recordings by Ivan Moravec, a Czech pianist born in 1930; he was to make his American debut with the Cleveland Orchestra under the direction of George Szell in 1964. Since then Moravec has been a regular visitor to America and the musical capitals of Europe, although his Boston appearances have been infrequent and irregular. Only last weekend did he make his debut with the Boston Symphony Orchestra; this evening he plays a solo recital of music by Beethoven and Debussy in the Theater-Concert Hall at Tanglewood.

Over the years Moravec's first recordings for the now-defunct Connoisseur Society label have built him a substantial cult following. At the time they were issued they were the most glamorous-sounding piano records that had ever been made, and they still sound pretty spectacular today. In fact they sounded so good that they may have set Moravec's career back a little, because there is no way any pianist playing on pianos of varying quality in halls of varying acoustics can consistently sound that good.

The Book-of-the-Month Club issued boxes of Moravec LPs of Beethoven and Chopin, and recently Nonesuch, in response to many requests, has reissued his 30-year-old set of the Chopin Nocturnes on CD. His recording career continues: Dorian has recently issued a CD of the Chopin Scherzi, and Supraphon will soon issue both Brahms Piano Concertos recorded with the Czech Philharmonic under the direction of Jiri Belohlavek.

Moravec came along to lunch late last week, with his outspoken and delightful wife, Zusanna -- her brother is the conductor Martin Turnovsky, who conducted Moravec's highly regarded recording of Beethoven's Fourth Concerto. Moravec, who looks like a gentler, kindlier Fred Gwynne, was scarcely less outspoken than his wife, though he is more circumspect. Asked how a famous pianist taught, Moravec said, “Badly -- but don't say who he is.” There wasn't anything the least bit mysterious about him.

Moravec took up the piano relatively late, at age 7. “One thing I see with children,” he says, “is that the proof of talent is interest. Nobody had to push me to practice; this is what I wanted to do. There were good amateur musicians in the family. My father was a mathematician, but he played the violin, and I grew up hearing the sonatas and chamber music of Mozart and Beethoven and Brahms. My first little recital was a radio transmission after the war, in 1946.”

That was after a childhood accident that came close to canceling the possibility of a musical career. Moravec was ice-skating and a larger boy pushed him down; when he fell he damaged both his neck and his spine. “I was 10 years old, and it gave me several years of big troubles; in bad weather I can still feel this. I had to develop the technique of how to use intelligently the hands.”

Conditions in Prague had been difficult during World War II. “The Nazis were cruel and intelligent, far more so than the Russians who came afterwards. There was a musical life, not so many concerts as today, but all of them were packed. Many great musical talents were victims of the war and of the Communism that followed. These were the great years of the conductor Vaclav Talich, who built the Czech Philharmonic out of young students. ”

“It was the most divine-sounding orchestra; the cellist Pierre Fournier said he had never heard such a sound, and I agree with him. The first thing the government did after the Communist coup in 1948 was to send Talich out of his job. It was a particularly difficult time for young composers, because contact with the rest of the world was so difficult. ”

Moravec's teacher had been Mme. Stepanova, the daughter of the professor Kurz who had been the teacher of the greatest Czech pianist of a previous generation, Rudolf Firkusny. In 1957 Moravec went to Italy to study with the legendary and reclusive Arturo Benedetti Michelangeli.

“I spent perhaps three times 40 minutes with him at the piano," Moravec recalls, "though of course we spent much more time drinking wine together. That was his greatest time and the level of his playing of pieces like Schumann's 'Faschingswank aus Wien' and Ravel's 'Gaspard de la nuit' was simply sublime. Unbelievable. His teaching was very personal, very precise. He knew exactly what he wanted to hear. And after you had played something for him once, he never wanted to hear it back.”

Studies with Michelangeli have launched more than one eminent career, but Moravec's breakthrough had come the year before, although he did not know it at the time. In 1956, Moravec had played in Prague a recital of Beethoven, Chopin, Franck and Debussy. A friend took a tape of that concert with him when he left Czechoslovakia, and copies of the tape circulated in England and America. Ultimately it came into the hands of the co-founders of Connoisseur Society, and in 1962 Moravec was invited to come to America, not for concerts, but to make the first of those now-fabled recordings. “It was that tape that for me practically the door opened.”

When this writer mentioned his longstanding admiration for Moravec's passionate recording of Chopin's C-Minor Nocturne, the pianist responded with a little story. “You know, I made two takes of that Nocturne. The producer liked one of them, but I liked my choice better. We went out for something to eat, and I gave up. Now, after all these years, I think he was right. I enjoy making records, but absolutely in long takes. The new Brahms First Concerto was done in two takes. I am unable to play for 10 bars to make a correction; when it gets to mending I am impossible.”

Moravec is one of the few pianists today who has his own sound; once you have heard it you can identify it immediately. This kind of individuality was more common in an earlier generation. “I agree that today there is a uniformity in piano playing, although the level of technique and craftsmanship is generally better today than it used to be. But one result of that is that you hear a personal sound less often.”

Moravec taught for many years in Prague, but gradually withdrew from teaching because of the demands of a touring career. “Now, however, we have a wonderful new president, Vaclav Havel, and my friends came to me and said to me, ‘Now you must teach again,’ but it is very difficult.”

Moravec was looking forward eagerly to his first concert with the Boston Symphony. “I have this talent that lets me tell what orchestra is playing on a record by its sound. Once, after a concert in New York, friends played me five recordings of Ravel's Daphnis and Chloe, and I knew immediately which one was the Boston Symphony under Charles Munch. I am an old lover and admirer of this sound, and it is still there. I just envy the members of the orchestra -- they have always their own instruments in their hands, while a pianist must switch to another instrument with every performance. This is not easy.”