Van Cliburn, 1934–2013

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.”

“If the Tchaikovsky competition represented Cliburn’s breakthrough,” said The New York Times, “it also turned out to be his undoing.” His attempts to broaden his repertoire fell flat. “The artistic growth and maturity that were expected of him never fully came,” and by the late 1960s his wholesome Texan image—which had charmed Americans and Russians alike in the 1950s—seemed “out of step.”

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In 1978, at age 44, Cliburn withdrew from the concert scene, said Philly.com, and he and his mother moved into an 18-acre Tudor estate in Fort Worth. A “self-described homebody,” Cliburn spent his time tending his rose garden and entertaining guests. He still gave the odd performance, but preferred to mentor other young musicians through his own annual piano competition. Asked in 1996 whether he regretted never becoming the next Rubinstein or Rachmaninoff, Cliburn replied, “I couldn’t be those people. Nobody can be. I can only be Van Cliburn.”