The sheer dominance of Mr. Fischer made it plain to the Soviet authorities that Mr. Taimanov’s poor outing against him had not entirely been the Russian’s fault. They reinstated his benefits and allowed him to travel again.

But he never got another shot at the title because he never again qualified for the Candidates tournament. And perhaps as a consequence of the sanctions against him, his marriage to Ms. Bruk ended as well, as did their musical partnership.

They had met while studying at the Leningrad Conservatory and married when they were both 19. Soviet regulations virtually prohibited married couples from traveling together in the West, however, so they remained relatively unknown outside the Soviet bloc.

But when Philips Classics put together its “Great Pianists of the 20th Century” series, which included 200 compact discs, the Taimanovs were one of only two duos in the set.

Mark Evgenievich Taimanov was born on Feb. 7, 1926, in Kharkiv, Ukraine, and moved to Russia when he was 6 months old. His father was a passionate chess player, and his mother taught piano at a conservatory in Ukraine. She also taught her son to play.

Music played a role in Mr. Taimanov’s introduction to chess. When he was 11, he was cast as the boy violinist in a movie called “Beethoven’s Concerto,” turning him into a minor film star in the Soviet Union and prompting an invitation to join the Zhdanov Palace of Young Pioneers in Leningrad, one of many youth organizations springing up in the Soviet Union. When its director asked Mr. Taimanov what he wanted to study, he replied, “Chess.”

(For the movie, he had also learned how to hold and play the violin. Years later, Isaac Stern, the great violinist and conductor, told Mr. Taimanov that he had seen only one Russian violinist hold the instrument really elegantly, and that was in the movie “Beethoven’s Concerto.” To which Mr. Taimanov replied, “That wasn’t a violinist, that was me!”)