An International Star
Van Cliburn was celebrated at a ticker tape parade in New York
At Age 23, An Acclaimed International Star
Cliburn's victory in Moscow created a sensation around the world.T
The news of an American pianist winning a prestigious competition in the heart of the Soviet Union sent shockwaves through both countries and became a symbol of cultural diplomacy during a time of intense political rivalry.
The event brought a temporary thaw in the Cold War tensions, a powerful reminder that music could transcend political barriers and foster understanding between nations.
Cliburn returned to the United States to a hero's welcome. He received a ticker-tape parade in New York City, the first one ever held for a classical musician.
A recording of Cliburn’s interpretation of Tchaikovsky’s Piano Concerto No. 1 , which he had played during the final round of competition, became the first classical album to reach platinum status.
An Unlikely National Icon
""Ah swear to goodness, ah just can't believe all this is happenin' to li'l ole Van Cliburn from the piney woods of East Texas!"
- Van Cliburn quote from an interview with Time Magazine
Following is an excerpt from Time Magazine April 21, 1958.
Not A Typical Piano Virtuoso
“The long-legged 23-year-old winner of Moscow's International Tchaikovsky Piano Competition had overnight become the object of the most explosive single outpouring of popular acclaim ever accorded a U.S. musician…
“In the tradition-filigreed world of highbrow music, the Texas longhair is a maverick who conforms to nobody's image of a virtuoso. His family has been American on both sides for at least four generations.
His pale baby face, with its cornflower-blue eyes beneath a tangle of yellow hair, might suggest a choir boy—which he has been. He is exuberantly gregarious, unsophisticated and, on the surface at least, totally untemperamental.”
A Contrast To Franz Liszt’s Russian Conquest
…The Russians have to look back a century for a comparable triumph.
That was when Franz Liszt, history's most vaunted piano virtuoso made his debut in St. Petersburg. Wearing Pope Pius IX's Order of the Golden Spur over his white cravat, his immaculate dress coat clanking with his other medals, his "shapely white hands" encased in doeskin gloves, he appeared, tossing his shoulder-length blond hair, before an audience of 3,000, who greeted him with ‘thunderous applause such as had not been heard in Russia for over a century.’
“Van Cliburn, who has been evoking that sort of reception for a month from Riga to Kiev, is a far cry from the saturnine dandy with the "Florentine profile."
He is a gangling (6 ft. 4 in., 165 Ibs.), snub-nosed, mop-haired boy out of Kilgore, as Texan as pecan pie. Instead of medals, he carried a well-thumbed Bible; instead of doeskin gloves, a single dress shirt, a plastic wing collar given to him by a friend, a ratty grey Shetland sweater that often showed under his dress jacket when he took his bows.”
An Articulate and Humble Ambassador
In the 1958 interview below with CBS Radio music director, James Fassett, 23 year old Van gives us an insider’s view of the role of music in the international arena, how the Tchaikovsky competition evolved, and how Rosina Lhevinne was instrumental in his participation.
