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Harvey Lavan " Van" Cliburn Jr. (July 12, 1934February 27, 2013) was an American pianist. At the age of 23, Cliburn achieved worldwide recognition when he won the inaugural International Tchaikovsky Competition in Moscow in 1958 during the Cold War.
Cliburn's mother, a piano teacher and an accomplished pianist in her own right, discovered him playing at age three, mimicking one of her students, and arranged for him to start taking lessons. Cliburn developed a rich, round tone and a singing-voice-like phrasing, having been taught from the start to sing each piece. Cliburn toured domestically and overseas. He played for royalty, heads of state, and every US president from Harry S. Truman to Barack Obama.
At 12, Cliburn won a statewide piano competition, which led to his debut with the Houston Symphony Orchestra. He graduated form Kilgore High School. He entered the Juilliard School in New York City at 17 and studied under Rosina Lhévinne,Marquis Who's Who who trained him in the tradition of the great Russian Romantic music. In 1952, Cliburn won the Kosciuszko Foundation's Chopin Piano Competition in New York City. At 20, Cliburn won the Leventritt Award and made his debut at Carnegie Hall.
/ref> but Cliburn wished to participate in the cultural exchanges with the Soviet Union which emerged following the death of Stalin in 1953. Cliburn's performance at the competition finale of Tchaikovsky's Piano Concerto No. 1 and Rachmaninoff's Piano Concerto No. 3 on April 13 earned him a standing ovation lasting eight minutes. After the ovation, Van Cliburn made a brief speech in Russian and then resumed his seat at the piano and began to play—to the surprise and delight of the Russian musicians visible behind him in the film made of his part in the competition—his own piano arrangement of the much-beloved song "Moscow Nights", which further endeared him to the Russians. When it was time to announce the winner, the judges felt obliged to ask permission of the Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev to give the first prize to an American. "Is he the best?" Khrushchev asked. "Yes." "Then give him the prize!" Cliburn was to maintain a lasting relationship with the Soviet leader. Cliburn returned home to a ticker-tape parade in New York City, the only time the honor has been accorded a classical musician. He was hailed in the American media as the man who "beat the Russians at their own game"
/ref> Arriving at City Hall after the parade, Cliburn told the audience:I appreciate more than you will ever know that you are honoring me, but the thing that thrills me the most is that you are honoring classical music. Because I'm only one of many. I'm only a witness and a messenger. Because I believe so much in the beauty, the construction, the architecture invisible, the importance for all generations, for young people to come that it will help their minds, develop their attitudes, and give them values. That is why I'm so grateful that you have honored me in that spirit.A cover story in Time magazine proclaimed him "The Texan Who Conquered Russia"."Show Business: Van's Big Year". Time. October 6, 1958. His triumph in Moscow propelled Cliburn to international prominence.
RCA Victor signed him to an exclusive contract, and his subsequent recording, Tchaikovsky Piano Concerto No. 1 was at the No. 1 position on the Billboard Top 200 albums for much of August and September 1958. And the album won the 1958 Grammy Award for Best Classical Performance. It was certified a gold record in 1961, and it became the first classical album to go platinum, achieving that certification in 1989. It was the best-selling classical album in the world for more than a decade. It eventually went triple-platinum. In 2004, this recording was re-mastered from the original studio analogue tapes, and released on a Super Audio CD.
Other standard repertoire Cliburn recorded include the Brahms Piano Concerto No. 2, Schumann Piano Concerto in A minor, Grieg Piano Concerto in A minor, Rachmaninoff Piano Concerto No. 2, Beethoven Piano Concerto No. 4 and No. 5 "Emperor", and the Prokofiev Piano Concerto No. 3.
In 1958, during a dinner hosted by the National Guild of Piano Teachers, President and Founder Dr. Irl Allison announced a cash prize of $10,000 to be used for a piano competition named in Cliburn's honor. Under the leadership of Grace Ward Lankford and with the dedicated efforts of local music teachers and volunteers, the first Van Cliburn International Piano Competition was held from September 24 to October 7, 1962, at Texas Christian University in Fort Worth. Until his death, Cliburn continued to serve as Director Emeritus for the Van Cliburn Foundation, as host of the quadrennial competition and host of other programs honoring his legacy.
In 1961, he first performed at the Interlochen Center for the Arts during its summer camp. He went on to do so for eighteen more years, his last visit to the school being in 2006.
Cliburn returned to the Soviet Union on several occasions. His performances there were usually recorded and even televised. In a 1962 Moscow appearance, Nikita Khrushchev, who met Cliburn again on this visit, and Andrei Gromyko, the Soviet Foreign Minister, were "spotted in the audience applauding enthusiastically". "Obituary: Van Cliburn". The Daily Telegraph. February 27, 2013. According to The Wall Street Journal, "Mr. Cliburn's affection for the Soviet people—and theirs for him—was notable in its warmth during a prolonged period of superpower strain." A 1972 concert performance of the Brahms Piano Concerto No. 2 with Kondrashin and the Moscow orchestra, as well as a studio recording of Rachmaninoff's Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini, were later issued on CD by RCA Victor.
On May 26, 1972, Cliburn gave a concert at Spaso House, the residence of the United States Ambassador to Russia, for an audience that included President Richard Nixon, Secretary of State William P. Rogers, and Soviet government officials.
He played for royalty and heads of state from dozens of countries and for every U.S. president from 1958 until his death.
Cliburn's 1958 piano performance in Moscow, when he won the prestigious Tchaikovsky International Piano Competition, has been added to the National Recording Registry in the Library of Congress for long-term preservation.
Cliburn was known as a night owl. He often practiced the piano until 4:30 or 5:00 am, then slept until around 1:30 pm. "You feel like you're alone and the world's asleep, and it's very inspiring."
Cliburn was a member of Broadway Baptist Church in Fort Worth and attended regularly when he was in town. His services were held on March 3, 2013, at the Broadway Baptist Church, with entombment at Greenwood Memorial Park Mausoleum in Fort Worth. His obituary lists as his only survivor his "friend of longstanding", Thomas L. Smith.
A year after Cliburn's death, a free anniversary concert was held on February 27, 2014, in his honor in downtown Fort Worth. "It's part of the Cliburn ideology of sharing the music with the larger audience", said Jacques Marquis, the Cliburn Foundation president.
A highlight of Cliburn's legacy was the profoundly positive reception of his person and performances in the Soviet Union during and after the Tchaikovsky competition. The same is true of his reception during and after the Cold War in the Soviet Union. According to Life (1958), the excitement and hype surrounding the news of Cliburn's debut in Moscow was almost too much to bear for some. They became infatuated with him and made no attempt to conceal it. "In the preliminaries, which had enlisted 50 young pianists from 19 different countries, Van was the big crowd-pleaser. Fans called him Vanyusha. Girls trailed him to the hotel. Soviet record companies pleaded with him to wax anything. In the finals, when he crashed out the last chords of the Rachmaninoff Third Concerto, the ecstatic audience in Moscow chanted 'first prize—first prize'.""Americans there; Russians here" Life (magazine), vol. 44, No. 17, April 28, 1958
Mark MacNamara of the San Francisco Classical Voice wrote: "The 6-foot 4-inch aw-shucks kid from Shreveport was 23, the son of an oil executive and a Juilliard graduate, and by all accounts didn't have a mean bone in his body. Indeed, much of his charm, then and throughout his life, was that he seemed so genuinely unaware of intrigue and enmity. Cliburn's talents were astounding, and he had a heart that loved people and music. This is a legacy that lasts."2 Macnamara, Mark "Van Cliburn and the cruelty of the piano" San Francisco Classical Voice, July 26, 2016.
As of the last International Tchaikovsky Competition (2023), Van Cliburn is still the only American to win the competition in piano. Five Americans have won medals at the Van Cliburn International Piano Competition in its -year history:
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