Vadym Kholodenko, Gold Medalist in the 14th Van Cliburn International Piano Competition, will present a “Van Cliburn in the Hills” solo concert at 7 p.m. Thursday, Jan. 30, in the Rapid City Performing Arts Center, as a fundraiser for the Black Hills Symphony Orchestra and the Rapid City Concert Association. Tickets for his “Van Cliburn in the Hills” solo concert at 7 p.m., Jan. 30,2014, in the Rapid City Performing Arts Center — $25 for adults and $20 for those 16 and younger — are available at the Black Hills Piano Gallery in Tuscany Square, The Clock Shop (the concert sponsor), and Warriors Work in Hill City, or by mail from the Rapid City Concert Association, PO Box 9211, Rapid City, SD 57709-9211.
People of a certain vintage probably don’t need to ask this question, but: Who was this Van Cliburn, anyway?
Van Cliburn: “Horowitz, Liberace and Presley all rolled into one”
1958. The height – or perhaps the depth – of the Cold War. Just the year before, in October, the Soviet Union had shaken the pride and confidence of the United States by launching Sputnik, surging to the forefront of the Space Race and undermining America’s international prestige.
Nervous Americas were in desperate need of a hero, and in April of 1958 they found a most surprising and unlikely one in a 23-year-old classical pianist from Fort Worth, Texas, Harvey Lavan “Van” Cliburn. The shy, wavy-haired musician became the most famous man in America overnight by winning the Gold Medal in the inaugural International Tchaikovsky Competition, staged in Moscow to back up the Sputnik triumph with a demonstration of Soviet cultural superiority.
Van Cliburn (he was almost always referred to by both names) was welcomed home with a ticker-tape parade in New York City, the first and only classical musician ever to be so honored. A cover story in Time magazine dubbed him “The Texan Who Conquered Russia” and “Horowitz, Liberace and Presley all rolled into one.”
“It would be hard to overestimate the impact of Cliburn winning the competition,” says Dr. Peter Alexander, a musicologist who was a Dallas teenager in 1958. “To this day, it was the biggest news I’ve ever seen by a classical musician in the United States. The idea that a shy, lanky boy from Texas could actually beat the Russians at their own game—classical music—was inconceivable. “
Alexander, who in retirement conducts the Longmont Colorado Concert Band and writes music reviews for a newspaper in Boulder, vividly remembers the excitement that Van Cliburn’s success generated in Texas: “It was incredibly exciting to those of us who lived in Texas at the time, and my father came home with the album of Cliburn playing in Moscow as soon as it was available. Cliburn really changed the state’s image of itself, and outsiders’ image of Texas.”
Van Cliburn had not been exactly an unknown in the classical music world before he traveled to the Soviet Union. At the age of 12 he won a statewide competition that led to a debut with the Houston Symphony Orchestra, and at the age of 20 he won the prestigious Leventritt Award and made his Carnegie Hall debut in New York. But nothing could have prepared him for what happened in Moscow, and the rock-star adulation that followed.
After his performance in the finals, the Tchaikovsky Competition audience responded with an eight-minute standing ovation. Even then, the judges were obliged to seek permission from Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev to present the award to an American. Khrushchev responded, “Is he the best? Then give him the prize.”
Throughout the many years until his death in February 2013 he sustained a unique stature, and the Van Cliburn name retained its magic as a code-world for musical excellence (and, of course, the inspiration for the phrase, “He’s no Van Cliburn”).
His recording of the Tchaikovsky Piano Concerto No. 1 became the first classical album to go platinum, then double-platinum and triple platinum. In 2013 the recording was added for long-term preservation at the National Recording Registry of the Library of Congress.
He played for every U.S. president from 1958 onward, as well as the royalty ofmany countries, and he was eventually honored with the highest civilian awards from both the United States and Russia, where he returned often and was known affectionately as “Vanya.”
And, of course, Van Cliburn – like Tchaikovsky – became the namesake of an international piano competition, which honors his legacy and is a milestone in the careers of the young musicians who earn its medals.
“It is remarkable that Cliburn was known for the rest of his life for winning the Tchaikovsky competition,” Alexander says. “Many pianists win competitions these days, but that one win was never forgotten. And the recognition made it possible for him to build an international career as a pianist, and to turn that success into a competition that aims to do for other young pianists what the Tchaikovsky did for him.”
Of course, the latest of these rising pianists is the young Ukrainian Vadym Kholodenko, who triumphed in last spring’s competition, which was watched with special interest because of Van Cliburn’s death just three months before