Farewell Fort Worth
What a privilege to have been immersed in music for the past week, to have met so many new friends, and to have been re-energized by the enthusiasm of so many people around the world. What a gift it is to be able to spend time this way, beyond the worries of the world. Everyone plays with different feelings, and listens with different ears. But the emotional connections make us all feel fresh and young again.
Congratulations to all who played — and who listened so attentively: I hope our paths cross again through music.
I’m leaving with what I’d dreamed of finding: fabulous memories that will stay bright and vivid for a lifetime, a feeling of real pride at being part of a family that puts such positive energy into the world, plus a really cool new pair of cowboy boots.
Sincere Thanks to all.
– Mike Hawley
June 8th, 2009 at 7:36 am
Dear Mike - well done!
Yes, the great thing was to met all these fantastic pianists and to be able to follow them in the future.
I hope Van Cliburn Competition give us another webcast next time. It is the only possible way for many fans in the world to follow the competition. Congratulations to the team.
I hope you still update the awards cerimony and end up making a nice movie with the highlights.
I am glad that my favourite performers got the descretionary awards and I wish them a bright future.
All best wishes.
June 8th, 2009 at 7:38 am
Discretionary Awards
can someone explain the exact meaning and if they work as individual choices of members of the jury?
The best performers (in my opinion, of course) in the competition got these awards!
June 8th, 2009 at 8:58 am
Thanks Mike, to you and the other “formal” (!) bloggers for making this 17 experience so wonderful and inclusive. It is really bittersweet to not have a place to go and interact with so many interesting people to talk about so many amazing pianists. I’m already looking forward to Cliburn XIV! Best, Paul.
June 8th, 2009 at 9:07 am
Thank you Mike for all your insight and enthusiasm for the music and the performers. Hopefully, we’ll get to meet in person someday!
June 8th, 2009 at 11:29 am
Thank you so much for your dedication and beautiful writeups for those who couldn’t be there! I’ve been a quiet observer from afar, but no less addicted to reading the updates. It was really fun to share the journey with people equally excited about the music. A huge thank you to the Van Cliburn foundation for opening up the webcast and making it accessible for everyone, and to ignite the passion again. It’s even inspired me to practice piano again! I hope it’ll remain freely available next time, to inspire another generation of musicians.
June 8th, 2009 at 11:52 am
Hi Everyone:
To all of you who enjoyed the webcast, including me, we might be more certain of enjoying the Fourteenth Competition if we may all donate something to the Van Cliburn Foundation.
June 8th, 2009 at 1:30 pm
Anyone know if the winners video is going to be posted?
June 8th, 2009 at 3:54 pm
In the meantime, enjoy Vondracek performing the Italian Concerto - pure delight - it is in the archive of the preliminaries …and his Chopin - there was nothing better than this in all the competition - what a wonderful sound.
June 8th, 2009 at 6:09 pm
Thanks so much to all the people who made this event so transparent for us classical music lovers. This truly was a joy!
June 8th, 2009 at 7:23 pm
thanks for these write-ups… I came to live near Ft Worth in 1980 and have attended all or part of each since then… Always a crop of amazing talent… The town becomes an international city for two weeks… and we get to hear the best piano music played by the next crop of wonderful exciting talent alive in the world!!!!
June 8th, 2009 at 7:52 pm
What is so wonderful is that all of these outstanding performances remain available on demand to see or to see again. Excellent audio and video. Well done!!
June 8th, 2009 at 11:54 pm
Mike- Thank you for all the great insights and wonderful words you shared with us in your blogs. You and your fellow bloggers greatly added to the unparalled experience of the Clliburn that this website provided the world with, which is far beond what any other piano competition does. It was nearly as good as being there and in some respects even better as Jade told us in that clip they would have run when the webcast was not on.
I wish you well in all you are doing and hope we get to have your for the next Cliburn.
And again- to all who had a hand in this wonderful webcast, the video/audio/tech/etc….Kudos. Great job. One little wish for next time would be to have a separte ongoing TECH ISSUES thread that ran thruout the entire competition. There seemed to be just too much competition going on and many technical issues or concerns about certain archives disappearing and other little things never had the time to be answered.
But its great what we do have to go back and listen to and watch. That IS a gift indeed.
June 9th, 2009 at 9:30 pm
What makes the Van Cliburn the greatest piano competition in the world is its inclusiveness. Everybody gets a chance to be part of a marvelous music festival - whether attending in person at Fort Worth or tuning in thousands of miles and many time zones away. The extensive coverage gives each and every performer an instant worldwide audience, so there are no “losers” here. May this long continue, and I am already looking forward to the 2013 competition from the comfort of my home!
June 10th, 2009 at 11:59 pm
To “The Cliburn” family,
Thank you so much for the festival this year, the amazing webcast, and your incomparable effort to make art of such a high level available to the world.
The world is a better place because of what you do.
The event has been a celebration of humanity through one of the most divine forms of creation - classical music. Every moment of this year’s Cluburn was filled with magic and is to be cherished.
Special thanks to you for bringing Nobuyuki Tsujii, who has touched and inspired the world in a truly unique way. He is the winner by any measure, sans competitions.
Thanks to the jury for the most challenging and yet extremely fair decisions.
And most of all, thanks to Maestro Van Cliburn for his wisdom and vision in creating The Cliburn to champion excellence in art and bring the world closer as an endeavor to help heal our afflicted planet.
I look forward to 2013.
June 11th, 2009 at 9:04 pm
What a glorious celebration of music the Cliburn competition was this year. I am still coming down from the 3 wks. of “high.” The pianists this year were amazing. I especially loved Zhang from the first moment I heard him play in the prelimin.ary round. Kudo’s to all the judges. Not only were the 3 winners unbelievably talented, but each one displayed such humility. To me this was another example of the quality of leadership, organization, and class. The entire Cliburn team did a fabulous job. It is an honor to be a Ft. Worth local and to be able to take part in this event. Many thanks ! It wil be exciting to see how Zhang and Tsujii grow and evolve in their talents through these next 3 yrs.
June 12th, 2009 at 3:53 pm
Hi,
Guys checkout an exclusive behind the scenes video produced on DFWReporting.com at how the 2009 Van Cliburn was so successful on DFWReporting.com here:
http://dfwreporting.com/2009/06/06/exclusive-behind-the-scenes-at-the-van-cliburn-pianist-competition-in-fort-worth/