In celebration of Van Cliburn's sensational victory at the first International Tchaikovsky Competition in 1958, a group of Fort Worth music teachers and volunteers created the Van Cliburn International Piano Competition. Mr. Cliburn acts as artistic advisor and the guiding spirit behind the Competition.
Van Cliburn Biography
The name Van Cliburn has probably been familiar to more people than the name of any other classical musician since Cliburn won the First International Tchaikovsky Competition in Moscow in 1958, at the height of the Cold War. For an American to be so warmly received in Russia and to win the top prize in the prestigious Russian music competition was a stunning accomplishment, especially given the political atmosphere at the time.
Returning home from Moscow, Cliburn received a ticker-tape parade in New York City, the only time a classical musician was ever honored with the highest tribute possible by the City of New York. Upon Cliburn's invitation, Kiril Kondrashin, the conductor with whom the pianist had played his prize-winning performances, came from Moscow to repeat the celebrated concert program with Cliburn at Carnegie Hall in New York, at the Academy of Music in Philadelphia, and in Washington, D.C. Their recording of Tchaikovsky's First Piano Concerto, made during Kondrashin's visit, was the first classical recording ever to sell enough copies to be awarded a platinum record, and by now has sold over three million copies.
Following his triumph in Moscow, Cliburn played in several cities in the Soviet Union, and from that time on, he toured widely and frequently. He performed with every major orchestra and conductor and appeared in all of the important international concert halls. Between 1960 and 1972, Cliburn toured the Soviet Union four times. He made many timeless and popular recordings of major piano concertos and of a wide variety of solo repertoire. Cliburn has performed for every President of the United States since Harry Truman and for royalty and heads of state in Europe, Asia, and South America.
At the height of his career, Van Cliburn still found time to give his name, talents, and energies to the Van Cliburn International Piano Competition. First held in 1962, the Competition is a living legacy to Van Cliburn's commitment to aiding the development of young artists.
In 1987, after an extended sabbatical, Cliburn performed at the White House at a State Dinner honoring Mikhail Gorbachev, then the Soviet Union's General Secretary. Two years later, and thirty-one years after his triumph at the Tchaikovsky Competition, Cliburn returned to the Soviet Union to perform at the Great Hall of the Moscow Conservatory and in Leningrad.
His return to the concert stage also took him to Carnegie Hall for the opening of the Hall's 100th anniversary season, as soloist with the New York Philharmonic; to the gala opening concert of the Morton H. Meyerson Symphony Center in Dallas; the dedication of the Lied Center for the Performing Arts in Lincoln, Nebraska; and the Bob Hope Cultural Center in Palm Springs, California.
Since 1990, Cliburn has toured Japan numerous times and has performed all over the United States; including Nashville, for their fiftieth anniversary; and with the symphony orchestras of Fort Worth, Columbus, Oklahoma City, San Jose, Oregon, San Antonio, Austin, Seattle, Huntsville, the University of Iowa, and Houston. He also has appeared with the National Symphony in Washington, D.C., the Philadelphia Orchestra, and with the Boston Symphony at Tanglewood several times. In 1998 he appeared at the opening of the Nancy Lee and Perry R. Bass Performance Hall in Fort Worth, both in recital and as soloist with the Fort Worth Symphony Orchestra.
In honor of Cliburn's return to the concert stage, the eight-disc Van Cliburn Collection was released on the RCA Victor label, containing many of Cliburn's classic concerto recordings: Tchaikovsky Concerto No. 1; Rachmaninoff Concertos Nos. 2 and 3; Prokofiev Concerto No. 3; Brahms Concerto No. 2; and Rachmaninoff's Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini. A documentary, Van Cliburn, Concert Pianist, has been featured on the Arts and Entertainment network.
Before 1958, Cliburn had already won numerous awards in the US, including the prestigious Leventritt Foundation Award in New York in 1954. He had appeared with the New York Philharmonic under the baton of Dmitri Mitropoulos, as well as with other major American orchestras. Cliburn played in public for the first time at age four, and at the age of twelve he made his orchestral debut with the Houston Symphony as the winner of a statewide competition for young pianists in Texas.
Van Cliburn studied piano with his mother, Rildia Bee O'Bryan Cliburn, from the age of three until he entered The Juilliard School at seventeen to study with Rosina Lhevinne. Mrs. Cliburn studied with Arthur Friedheim, who had been a pupil of Franz Liszt.
Education and encouragement of young artists has been a primary interest of Cliburn throughout his career. He endowed scholarship programs at many schools, including The Juilliard School, Cincinnati Conservatory, Texas Christian University, Louisiana State University, the Franz Liszt Academy in Budapest, and at the Moscow and Leningrad Conservatories. He has served on the Board of Trustees for the Interlochen Arts Academy in Interlochen, Michigan and established scholarships there as well. He funded the building of the Van Cliburn Scholarship Lodge at Interlochen to generate additional scholarships.
Cliburn is the recipient of honorary degrees from many universities, including Baylor, Loyola, Texas Christian, Michigan State, the University of Cincinnati, Louisiana State, Southern Methodist, Boston University, and the Moscow Conservatory, among others. In 1996 he received the Michigan University Musical Society's First Distinguished Artist Award. In 1998, the Classical Music Broadcasters Association awarded him the Arturo Toscanini Award and he received an honorary doctorate from The Juilliard School. In 2001, Cliburn was inducted into the American Classical Music Hall of Fame and was presented with a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Texas Cultural Trust. The supporting recital facilities of the Nancy Lee and Perry R. Bass Performance Hall in Fort Worth were recently dedicated and named the Van Cliburn Recital Hall. In December 2001, Mr. Cliburn was presented with the prestigious Kennedy Center Honors Medallion at the televised tribute held in Washington, D.C. In February of 2002, he received the President's Merit Award from the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences and his 1958 recording of Tchaikovsky's Piano Concerto No. 1 in B-flat minor, Opus 23 was inducted into the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences Hall of Fame. In July 2003, President Bush awarded Cliburn the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the nation's highest civilian honor.
