The origins of these live 1960 performances lie inevitably in Van Cliburn’s legendary triumph in Moscow’s inaugural Tchaikovsky International Piano Competition in 1958, a time when competitions still mattered. Relatively few in number, one event did not dilute the impact of another. Yet if in those early days of, say, major competitions in Warsaw and Brussells winners were catapulted to international stardom, the 1958 Tchaikovsky Competition was altogether exceptional. Created to display the superiority of Russian talent it was won by an American pianist whose massive technique, warmth, lustrous tone (“not kalaidoscopically varied, but invariably round, burnished and unforced”) made any alternative vote an impossibility. Jury (including Shostakovich, Kabalevsky, Richter and Gilels) and audience united in celebration of a pianist “more Russian than the Russians” and never more so that in his performances of Tchaikovsky and Rachmaninov. As the late Irina Zaritskaya, in the audience at the time and herself a major prize-winner put it, “for us Russians his way with what we considered our music was uncanny. Such grandeur, romantic warmth and empathy. He came close to sentimentality but never quite crossed the line. His playing had an extraordinary nobility and you can’t even imagine the furore he caused. His playing is still endlessly discussed in Russia.” Outsize acclaim followed and Cliburn returned to America to be fêted in a style unknown since the days of Liszt and Paderewski. Such celebrity, such sudden fame and fortune, has its dangers. To relish such lavish acknowledgement is understandable, but so is the need to grow and enrich even the most remarkable talent. Cliburn’s repertoire of largely standard works failed to expand and within too short a time the strains of endless touring, of prolonged stays in foreign and alien surroundings, to say nothing of sniping comments by colleagues envious of his fame, took their toll. Tired and disillusioned, missing his family and friends, Cliburn took a sabbatical that extended for many years. Judgements such as “I consider him to have been ethically defective as an artist. He never took it seriously that he had a pair of miraculous hands. I think that when his instincts could take him no further, he didn’t make the effort to buttress instinct with conscious understanding” must have hurt an essentially innocent nature. Later cocooned in Fort Worth, Texas, he remained unknowable (“he walks, stands with a sheath of reserve so thick you could cut it with a Bowie knife”) and certainly my own conversations with Cliburn many years ago in both Dallas and London rarely penetrated beyond a persona at once natural and calculated. Warm, charming, outwardly easy-going and with a wacky Texan sense of humour he made for delightful company, but I came away puzzled by a man who stayed so resolutely on the surface of things (“Oh, I’m so personal that I would never let anybody know what I like or dislike”). Did he end like Eileen Joyce, a similary ill-fated over-exposed pianist, whose early brilliance and glamour ended with the bleak opinion, “I’ve had an odd life. I haven’t liked it much.”?
Extract from the boklet note Bryce Morrison, 2011
