When a lanky, unpretentious, incredibly gifted,
twenty-three-year-old Texan took Moscow by musical storm in 1958,
it launched a sensational career that began at the age of thirteen
and was to span over four decades. At the height of the Cold War,
this friendly, open-hearted pianist enchanted the hearts of
Americans and Russians alike with his playing that was more about
"personal communications than exhibitionistic virtuosity." Winning
the Soviet-sponsored Tchaikovsky International Piano Competition
immediately thrust Van Cliburn into political as well as artistic
pressures, attention, adulation, and scrutiny that might have
sabotaged any young artist who lacked the confidence and conviction
of Van Cliburn.
In a meteoric career that made Van Cliburn a cultural hero
tantamount to the Beatles, the facts became stranger than the
fiction that abounded about his career that "fizzled a year or two
after the Tchaikovsky competition," or about the near loss of an
arm, or about his eleven-year retreat into privacy beginning in the
late '70s.
The myth that surrounded the name Van Cliburn in the '50s and
'60s became legend with his triumphant re-entry in 1987―an event
that was to epitomize the poetic nature of Van's entire life.
Responding to an invitation to perform for Mikhail and Raisa
Gorbachev at a state dinner, Van once again proved that music is
indeed the universal language of understandng capable of uniting
our diverse cultures. Bounding off the platform after his
performance to kiss Nancy Reagan and Raisa Gorbachev, Van responded
to Raisa's request for more music by playing the beloved Soviet
song, "Moscow Nights"―the same nostalgic song he had learned and
performed during his first incredible journey to Moscow in
1958.
As millions of Americans watched on their television screens,
the usual staid state dinner dissolved into a moving memory of Van
singing along with the Gorbachevs as the whole room dissolved into
tears. Russia and America joined hands and hearts in this one
historical moment.
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