Who Was Van Cliburn? A Brief Bio…

Moscow, 1958, Cliburn wins first prize at the first Tchaikovsky Competition

—Jan Farrington

Harvey Lavan (“Van”) Cliburn Jr. was born in Shreveport, Louisiana in 1934, but raised in the oil-boom town of Kilgore, Texas. His father worked in the oil industry, and his mother, Rildia Bee O’Bryan Cliburn, was an accomplished pianist and teacher only “two degrees of separation” from the great Franz Liszt. (She had studied piano with Arthur Friedheim, a student of Liszt.)

The story goes that she noticed Van at age three mimicking one of her students and repeating his piano piece. By then, though, surely she had noticed the hands—the gift-from-God hands of a pianist, large and long-fingered.

By the time he was a young teen, Van had won a statewide Texas competition and debuted with the Houston Symphony. He left home for New York and the Juilliard School at age 17, and studied under Rosina Lhevinne, who taught him all she knew about the Russian romantic tradition. He won the International Chopin Competition at age 18; at 20, he won the Leventritt Award and made his debut at Carnegie Hall.

There was a buzz around him.

In 1958, young pianists the world over were invited to the first Tchaikovsky Competition in Moscow, an event to showcase Soviet musical and cultural prowess. Cliburn became a fast favorite with the audiences. His performances of Prokofiev and Rachmaninoff in the finals earned him a tremendous ovation—even the orchestra was smiling. Here’s a video of Cliburn playing part of Rachmaninoff’s Third Piano Concerto:

That’s just half the story. We’ll pick it up in a later piece, and leave young Van on the brink of becoming a musical superstar—and a Cold War hero.