“Your
responsibility is to solve your problems.”
“The
Texan Who Conquered Russia.” That’s how Time Magazine described Van Cliburn.
Its 1958 cover story raved that he was Elvis, Liberace, and violinist Vladimir
Horowitz all rolled into one. Not to be outdone, Variety dubbed him “a musical
Lindbergh.”
This
lone eagle of the keyboard competed against 49 other pianists from 19 nations,
flying away with first-place honors at Moscow’s International Tchaikovsky Competition.
At six-foot four, Cliburn wasn't just lanky, he was downright gawky. Baby faced, too. He
was all of 23 years old—and terribly shy. His only weapon—The intense (and
romantic) way he attacked the keyboard.
His
mother Rildia began teaching him when he was about three or four. (She had
studied under a man who had been taught by Lizst.) Why so young? She caught him at the keyboard imitating one of her students.
His talent quickly became so evident his parents built him a practice studio attached to the garage of their
Kilgore, Texas, home.
At the age of nine or 10, his mother
wanted him to play the Transcendental Etudes of Lizst. He balked, saying, “I
can’t play this because I don’t have perfect hands like you.”
He always remembered his mother’s
stern reply: “No one has perfect hands! Everyone has problems. Your
responsibility is to solve your problems.”
He must have listened to her. Cliburn
first performed with the Houston Symphony when he was 12. When he was 13, he
placed first a statewide competition.
Right place,
right time
The legendary Julliard School offered
him a scholarship, but he was too much of a mama’s boy to go to Manhattan. He would take
lessons from her and no one else. Only after graduating from high school did he make the leap to the big city.
In 1954 he won the prestigious
Leventritt Award. It had gone un-awarded for the three preceding years. No contestant had sufficiently impressed the judges. Cliburn did, and his
victory won him debut performances with five top U.S. orchestras. His signature
piece? Tchaikovsky’s Piano Concerto No. 1.
So
when the Moscow competition rolled around in 1958, “Cliburn was the right man,
at the right place, in the right moment,” said one writer.
But the fix was definitely in. The grand prize was to have gone to a Russian. After all, this was a Tchaikovsky competition. The
Ministry of Culture had told the Kremlin’s new boss Nikita Khrushchev that a
son of the motherland would obviously capture the honor.
It would be yet another inspiring victory for
communism. Months earlier the Soviet Union had sorely bruised America’s
self-confidence when it successfully orbited Sputnik, the world’s first artificial
satellite.
But
when the competition left outer space and hit the concert stage, things didn’t
go as the commissars hoped. Russian music lovers went ga-ga. There was
something about Cliburn’s passion that touched their Slavic souls. What’s more,
teenage Russian girls adored Cliburn and his bouffant hairdo the way American teens
would later react to John, Paul, George, and Ringo. Yes, they fainted and
wept when he performed.
As
the young gentleman from Texas advanced from round to round of the competition,
he found himself besieged by bouquets of flowers and stacks of fan mail from
admirers.
Russian girls called him “Cleeburn.”
Strangers stopped him on the sidewalk to hug him. The New York Times’ Moscow
correspondent Max Frankel covered the competition and wrote that
"especially the young girls were going absolutely crazy about Van's
performances, heaping flowers on him."
When
he finished performing the night of the first round of competition, the Russian
audience was so overwhelmed it thundered, “First! First prize!” The night of
the finals his standing ovation lasted eight minutes. The vote of the
judges—unanimous.
Clearly,
Muscovites wanted the American to win, but would the Kremlin permit that?
Fearful of the regime’s response if Cliburn took first prize, the judges asked
Khrushchev for permission to honor to him.
“Is the American really the best?” Khrushchev
asked. When told that he was, the dictator replied, “So you have to give him
the prize!”
At
a reception at few days later, Khrushchev threw his arms around Cliburn. After the heartiest of Russian bear hugs, he asked, “Why are you so tall?”
“Because
I am from Texas,” he replied. “I guess because my father gave me so many vitamins."
A
transcendental force
On
his return, New York City feted him with a ticker-tape parade. More than
100,000 people lined Broadway to welcome home the conquering keyboard king. It
was the only time the city has given a musician such an honor.
When
he went on tour around the U.S., he caused riots. Fans in
Philadelphia tore door handles off his limo. One local branch of an Elvis
Fan Club even changed its name to the Van Cliburn Fan Club.
His
album showcasing his award-winning piano concerto dueled with Elvis and the soundtrack
from My Fair Lady for the top spot on the charts. It became the first classical
album to sell more than a million copies.
"In 1958, he proved to the world
that music is a transcendental force that goes beyond political boundaries and
cultural boundaries and unifies mankind. He was a very concrete example of
that," said Veda Kaplinsky, the head of Julliard’s piano department.
Besides having the courage to go into
the heart of mother Russia to represent America, Cliburn, being the polite
young man that he was, also said nice things about America’s rival, at a time when
it was unthinkable to do so.
“The only thing that the Russians
want from the Americans,” Cliburn remarked, “is to meet them in an atmosphere
of friendship, sincerity and mutual understanding.”
That was enough to for FBI director
J. Edgar Hoover to start a file on him. It also didn’t help that Cliburn also
said, “You can’t love music enough to want to play it without other
kids thinking you’re queer or something.”
In later years, Cliburn and
his partner led a quiet life out of the spotlight. Though he became wealthy
from his performances and recordings, his career never ascended higher than it
did at its outset.
A lifelong Christian, he regularly
attended church and typically slipped in just before the service began, taking
a seat in the back row. Towards the end of his life, he told his minister "one of the most profound truths that
has characterized my life is St. Paul's advice to 'pray without ceasing,'
"That's how I have lived my
life."
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