Van Cliburn

Richard Dyer's commentary on a March 2008 interview with Van Cliburn, exclusive to the Van Cliburn Foundation:

It was just fifty years ago-on April 14, 1958-that Van Cliburn won the first International Tchaikovsky Competition in Moscow.

That victory made the lanky twenty-three-year-old pianist from Kilgore, Texas, an international celebrity; his return to America was marked by a ticker-tape parade through the streets of New York City. Over the next few years he became one of the defining musicians of his time-and not just because he had beaten the Russians'' just a few months after the Russians had beaten us by launching the first satellite, Sputnik.

There was a political aspect to his victory-and Soviet premier Nikita Khrushchev himself had to be consulted before the jury could award the prize to an American. But Cliburn prefers to downplay this dimension of his story, quoting a piece of advice his grandfather gave to his mother and first piano teacher, Rildia Bee Cliburn. Never engage in politics,'' Judge O'Bryan told his daughter. Politics is a great art, but it is a divisive art. Classical music is for everyone, all over the world.''

What unified Cliburn's audiences in Moscow and everywhere he went for years afterward was his communicative artistic achievement, his depth and generosity of feeling, and the missionary zeal he feels for the gospel of music. With these human and artistic qualities, he burst through the iron curtain between his country and the Soviet Union that had been firmly drawn for more than a decade. Soviet musicians were amazed that Cliburn was not the American monster depicted in Soviet propaganda-and astonished that he played Russian music better than most Russian pianists did. He became an inspiration to many generations of younger artists toiling away in practice rooms around the world and helped make his own country safer for music and musicians.

Today Cliburn lives in Fort Worth, Texas, in a large home filled with memorabilia-and pianos. He takes a lively interest in the quadrennial competition founded in his name by his many admirers and in its winners and competitors. And he still occasionally ventures out to perform.

Recently the pianist, in a gregarious mood, settled down on the phone to talk about a subject he usually prefers to avoid, himself, and specifically his younger self, the conquering hero who became an American icon.

Cliburn had only a few months to prepare for this competition, but in a way his whole life had been leading up to it. He had only two piano teachers. His mother was born in McGregor, Texas, but her principal teacher was Arthur Friedheim, a pupil of the legendary Franz Liszt-Friedheim had a German name, but he was born in St. Petersburg, and before he went to Liszt he had studied with the greatest of the early Russian pianists, Anton Rubinstein. Juilliard's Rosina Lhevinne, Cliburn's other teacher, was also Russian, Russian-trained, and the widow of the great Russian pianist Josef Lhevinne. Cliburn's pianistic upbringing took place in Texas and New York, but it was also all-Russian.

I grew up hearing about Mr. Friedheim and all the other great pianists of that time,'' Cliburn recalls. My mother didn't know nursery rhymes, so instead she would tell me stories about Liszt and Chopin. We had a wind-up Victrola and a decent library of recordings, on breakable 78s in those days, so we would listen to the great Rachmaninoff and she would talk about the thrilling world she had lived in. She painted pictures in words and it took my breath away. I had to learn later what a nursery rhyme was!

The first announcement of the Tchaikovsky Competition reached the New York offices of Steinway & Sons, the eminent piano manufacturing firm, early in September 1957.

A friend from Steinway called to tell me about it,'' Cliburn remembers, and not long after that Mrs. Lhevinne called me too. Both of them felt it would maybe be a good thing if I were to enter the competition. It didn't take much persuading-I just wanted to go to Russia so much. When I was five years old, my parents gave me a picture book about world history for Christmas, and in it there were pictures of St. Basil's Cathedral and the Kremlin. I wanted to go and see them right then and there.''

To get to Moscow, Cliburn took his first flight on a jet. I left New York on the evening of March 26 and it was a circuitous trip-Boston, Paris, Prague. The Prague to Moscow leg was a jet; we didn't have commercial jets. When the plane landed a little militiaman came on and checked my passport. I smiled at him and he smiled back. A nice lady from the ministry of culture came up to meet me-‘Mr. Van Kleeburn? Welcome to Moscow.' ‘Wherever I am staying,' I asked her, ‘could we please drive past the Church of St. Basil first?' I wanted to see it that very night, and it was breathtaking.''

For the competition Cliburn had to prepare a substantial repertory. Some of the works were already cornerstones for him. He had played the first movement of the Tchaikovsky Concerto with the Houston Symphony Orchestra when he was twelve, and in 1954 there was a national broadcast of the work with the New York Philharmonic under the direction of Dmitri Mitropoulos, part of Cliburn's prize for winning the prestigious Leventritt Award. At nineteen he played his first performances of Rachmaninoff's Third Concerto.

The format of the competition meant he could play familiar works like these, but he also had to learn pieces he had never seen or heard-like a movement of Tchaikovsky's Grand Sonata in G, a Prelude and Fugue by Sergei Taneyev, and a new piece written especially for the competition by the Russian composer Dimitri Kabalevsky.

Dmitri Mitropoulos was very helpful to me and got me the music for these pieces. And he urged me to choose the Taneyev. He told me that Taneyev was an icon for composition at the Moscow Conservatory, of which he was at one time the director. I loved the Kabalevsky piece, a Rondo, and wanted to record it. But he wanted to revise it first, and never got around to it, so that project went by the wayside.''

On April 2, at 9:30 a.m., pre-dawn by Cliburn standards even then, the pianist opened the first round with the B-flat Minor Prelude and Fugue from Book I of Bach's Well-Tempered Clavier-the prelude is emotionally charged, and the complex five-voice fugue asks for whom the bell tolls.

Cliburn must have been nervous. I never had any contact with the jury until after the competition was over, but it was a frightening and formidable group, and they sat right in front of the stage, at a long table covered with green cloth. I could see [the composer] Dimitri Shostakovich, [and such eminent pianists as] Emil Gilels, Sviatoslav Richter, and all the others. And the Great Hall is hallowed ground because of all the people who have performed there, and the beloved music that was premiered there.''

But Cliburn was also at home with the music he was playing. My mother gave me the preludes and fugues of Bach when I was a child, and she always made me sing the fugue theme. The human voice was the first musical instrument, and our job as pianists is to take the piano, a percussion instrument, and meld the manual work with the pedal in order to create a singing quality.''

Next came a Mozart Sonata, and the first indication that Cliburn was making a strong impact on the public. I was shocked at the reaction, which was so very enthusiastic and gracious. I had to stand up twice.

Cliburn spent a lot of his time practicing between rounds, but he also walked around Moscow with some of his old American friends who were in the competition and some of his new Russian friends.

I can't explain it,'' he says, but it was a wonderful experience-I never felt any uncomfortable moment. The people were so enthusiastic, and for me it was so interesting to play for an audience for whom the study of music as a language was mandatory. In this country I think every school should teach the language of music too. The Russians knew the pieces you were playing, you could feel their electricity. It was thrilling to know that they knew what you were trying to do.''

In the second round the response was even wilder, and Cliburn fever spread far beyond the Great Hall because parts of the competition were broadcast and televised on the state channels. In the third round, after Cliburn had played the Rachmaninoff Concerto, the jury reportedly joined the tumultuous standing ovation.

That's true,'' Cliburn admits. I was not supposed to go back onstage after I had bowed, and the jury was not supposed to come backstage, but Gilels came and pulled me out in front of the audience again and kissed me. That was a moment I cannot begin to describe.''

There was another night of performances by other contestants and there was also some drama in the jury room-some members of the jury were targeting their scores so that the leading Soviet contestant would win, but they were offset by other members of the jury who were doing the same thing in reverse. And even when it became clear that Cliburn had to win, the decision could not be announced until after it had been cleared with Khrushchev.

I didn't find this out until years later,'' Cliburn says. Khrushchev's son, Dr. Sergei Khrushchev, teaches at Brown University, and he told me how they came to see his father.''

The formal announcement that Cliburn had won didn't come until a ceremony on Monday April 14. Shostakovich gave me the award. I felt as if I had been rewarded for twenty years of hard labor, given a passport to explore how many places I could have the pleasure of going to, how many audiences I could meet. Winning a competition presents a cycle of opportunities.

Meanwhile, Cliburn's semifinal and final rounds had been reported in the New York Times-on the front page, although Cliburn didn't know it yet. When the ceremony was over and he could finally escape the mob scenes, Cliburn called home.

I was still living in Kilgore in my head. I called my parents and I asked my mother to please call this lady we knew and tell her that I had won. All she said was, ‘Honey, she already knows.' I had no idea. And when they had the parade for me in New York, I thought, ‘Well, now the people in the next town know who I am.'

Cliburn says he was flabbergasted'' by the parade. And his family helped keep his feet on the ground. As we stood waiting for the car, my mother said to me, ‘As you are riding along, be thinking of what you are going to say.' What I did say was that I was grateful for all this attention, but I also hoped people would realize that I was really grateful that they were honoring classical music. I felt I was only an instrument, a person who was a messenger. The main thrust, the real thrust, was that people were realizing the value of great classical music.''

Although he has played often for presidents, monarchs, and potentates on ceremonial occasions of every kind, Cliburn always refused to get involved in the political side of things, even when his admiration of Russia and Russians wasn't universally accepted.

If people wanted to use me or classical music for political purposes,'' he says, that was fine, but I wasn't involved in politics, so I didn't have to be burdened by all of that. My interest was the universality of classical music, the capacity of music to enrich the soul, and that is for everybody.''

Cliburn tried to keep mindful of that during the twenty seasons of whirlwind activity that followed-100 concerts a year, recordings, radio, and television appearances. Possibly only Liszt and Paderewski among previous pianists were as universally famous as the modern media-made Cliburn.

Today Cliburn says he always felt renewed by audiences. My family was very community oriented, and I grew up in a town where almost everybody knew each other-you had to be careful if you misbehaved because your neighbors would tell your mother and daddy! I was never anonymous; I grew up in a situation where people knew me; that was a part of life, and I love people.''

Later he adds, There are some things you can't get from living in hotels. I have never been that happy with anything I ever did. As Rachmaninoff said, your horizon is always receding. You know all your own faults and frailties, yet you always want so much. Ultimately you need to go and do things to re-inspire and revitalize yourself.''

Cliburn has studied public speaking and his resonant voice was made for preaching and the art of rolling, old-fashioned oratory Playing the piano is like talking. A speaker must clearly enunciate what he is saying. At the piano you try to ‘speak' just as clearly, so that the last person in the last balcony will understand what you want to be clear about. You always hope you have something to say, and of course the great composers always do. You are really in the role of a waiter, serving a wonderful dinner.''

After twenty years in the eye of the storm, the pianist took an unannounced sabbatical from public performance that lasted nine seasons. I never dreamed it would go on so long. But it was a very happy time for me. I adore opera, for example, and I now had the opportunity to hear so many of the great singers.''

Encouragement to re-enter the fray came from an unexpected quarter. In 1983 Emil Gilels played what turned out to be his last performance in New York before his death. We were having dinner, and I was afraid he was going to scold me. But instead he said, ‘Bravo. You took time off. You were so wise to do that, to have some life for yourself.' But then he added, ‘I feel that when you play the next time, it will have something to do with Russia.' And it did-when I was invited to play for President and Mrs. Reagan and Soviet general-secretary Mikhail Gorbachev in 1987.

In the two decades since that legendary White House concert, Cliburn has restricted the number of his appearances, but he has no intention of taking another sabbatical. Conductors and instrumentalists keep on going until the end-or until they can't anymore. Music is always part of your life.''

Occasionally pundits wonder if any musical competition could create another phenomenon like Cliburn. The answer is that it isn't going to happen. No one would want to recreate the political situation within which it developed; no one would want to live through another Cold War. More to the point, it would require the emergence of another Van Cliburn.

Richard Dyer wrote about music in the Boston Globe for thirty-three years and remains active as a writer, teacher, and speaker. As a twelve-year-old in Oklahoma, he first heard Van Cliburn play on the New York Philharmonic broadcast in 1954, and he has never gotten over it.