The career of the young pianist Van Cliburn seemed to have stalled in 1958, when he entered Moscow’s International Tchaikovsky Competition. He was $7,000 in debt, and could only make the trip thanks to a charity grant. But his impassioned recitals of the Russian repertoire—tempered by a peculiarly American restraint—were a sensation for the Russian crowd, which greeted his final performance with chants of “First prize!” Since an American victory at the height of the Cold War would be a bitter blow to Moscow, the Soviet premier was consulted. “Is the American really the best?” Nikita Khrushchev asked. A Communist Party official said that he was. “So you have to give him the prize,” Khrushchev replied.
Harvey Lavan Cliburn Jr. was born in Shreveport, La., said The Wall Street Journal, and started learning to play from his mother, a piano teacher, at the age of 3. He debuted with the Houston Symphony at age 12, and at 17 went to Juilliard on a scholarship. The Tchaikovsky Competition rocketed Cliburn to fame unheard of for a classical musician. New York feted his return with a ticker-tape parade, and his recording of Tchaikovsky’s Piano Concerto No. 1 became the first classical album to sell more than a million copies. He appeared on the cover of Time as “The Texan Who Conquered Russia,” but Cliburn didn’t care about the politics. “Oh, I never thought about all of that,” he said. “I was just so involved with the sweet and friendly people who were so passionate about music.”
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