Courtesy of Van Cliburn Foundation, via Associated Press
Van Cliburn won the International Tchaikovsky Competition in Moscow in 1958. More Photos »
By ANTHONY TOMMASINI
Published: February 27, 2013 227 Comments
Van Cliburn, the American pianist whose first-place award at the 1958 International Tchaikovsky Competition in Moscow made him an overnight sensation and propelled him to a phenomenally successful and lucrative career, though a short-lived one, died on Wednesday at his home in Fort Worth. He was 78.
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Courtesy of the Van Cliburn Foundation, via Associated Press
Van Cliburn was the first musician to receive a New York ticker-tape parade, in 1958. More Photos »
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"That picture of him with his hands over his heart is the essence of the poetry of his life. With hands and heart he changed the world."C T, austria
His publicist, Mary Lou Falcone, confirmed the death, saying that Mr. Cliburn had been treated for bone cancer.
Hailing from Texas, Mr. Cliburn was a tall, lanky 23-year-old when he clinched the gold medal in the inaugural year of the Tchaikovsky competition. The feat, in Moscow, was viewed as an American triumph over the Soviet Union at the height of the cold war. He became a cultural celebrity of pop-star dimensions and brought overdue attention to the musical assets of his native land.
When Mr. Cliburn returned to New York he received a ticker-tape parade in Lower Manhattan, the first musician to be so honored, cheered by 100,000 people lining Broadway. In a ceremony at City Hall, Mayor Robert F. Wagner proclaimed that “with his two hands, Van Cliburn struck a chord which has resounded around the world, raising our prestige with artists and music lovers everywhere.”
Even before his Moscow victory the Juilliard-trained Mr. Cliburn was a notable up-and-coming pianist. He won the Leventritt Foundation award in 1954, which earned him debuts with five major orchestras, including the New York Philharmonic under Dimitri Mitropoulos. For that performance, at Carnegie Hall in November 1954, he performed the work that would become his signature piece, Tchaikovsky’s Piano Concerto No. 1, garnering enthusiastic reviews and a contract with Columbia Artists.
At the time, Mr. Cliburn was part of an exceptional American generation of pianists in promising stages of their own careers, among them Leon Fleisher, Byron Janis and Gary Graffman. And the Tchaikovsky competition came at a time when American morale had been shaken in 1957 by the Soviet Union’s launching of Sputnik, the world’s first artificial satellite.
The impact of Mr. Cliburn’s victory was enhanced by a series of vivid articles written for The New York Timesby Max Frankel, then a foreign correspondent based in Moscow and later an executive editor of the paper. The reports of Mr. Cliburn’s progress — prevailing during the early rounds, making it to the finals and becoming the darling of the Russian people, who embraced him in the streets and flooded him with fan mail and flowers — created intense anticipation as he entered the finals.
In his 1999 memoir, “The Times of My Life and My Life With The Times,” Mr. Frankel recalled his coverage of Mr. Cliburn’s triumph in Moscow: “The Soviet public celebrated Cliburn not only for his artistry but for his nationality; affection for him was a safe expression of affection for America.”
Mr. Frankel said he had “posed the obvious question of whether the Soviet authorities would let an American beat out the finest Russian contestants.”
“We now know that Khrushchev” — Nikita S. Khrushchev, the Soviet premier — “personally approved Cliburn’s victory,” he wrote, “making Van a hero at home and a symbol of a new maturity in relations between the two societies.”
Mr. Cliburn was at first oblivious to the political ramifications of the prize.
“Oh, I never thought about all that,” Mr. Cliburn recalled in 2008 during an interviewwith The Times. “I was just so involved with the sweet and friendly people who were so passionate about music.” The Russians, he added, “reminded me of Texans.”
The interview was conducted in conjunction with 50th-anniversary celebrations of the Moscow competition. The festivities, sponsored by the Van Cliburn Foundation, included a gala dinner at the Kimbell Art Museum in Fort Worth for 1,000 guests, among them the Russian culture minister and the Russian ambassador to the United States, who led a long round of toasts.
Mr. Cliburn was a naturally gifted pianist whose enormous hands had an uncommonly wide span. He developed a commanding technique, cultivated an exceptionally warm tone and manifested deep musical sensitivity. At its best his playing had a surging Romantic fervor, but one leavened by an unsentimental restraint that seemed peculiarly American. The towering Russian pianist Sviatoslav Richter, a juror for the competition, described Mr. Cliburn as a genius — a word, he added, “I do not use lightly about performers.”
Drawbacks of Early Success
Van Cliburn, Cold War Musical Envoy, Dies at 78
Published: February 27, 2013 227 Comments
(Page 2 of 4)
But if the Tchaikovsky competition represented Mr. Cliburn’s breakthrough, it also turned out to be his undoing. Relying inordinately on his keen musical instincts, he was not an especially probing artist, and his growth was stalled by his early success. Audiences everywhere wanted to hear him in his prizewinning pieces, the Tchaikovsky First Concerto and the Rachmaninoff Third. Every American town with a community concert series wanted him to come play a recital.
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After he won in Moscow, Time called Van Cliburn “the Texan who conquered Russia.” More Photos »
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TEACHER In 1988 with his mother, Rildia Bee O’Bryan Cliburn, with whom he studied. More Photos »
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"That picture of him with his hands over his heart is the essence of the poetry of his life. With hands and heart he changed the world."C T, austria
“When I won the Tchaikovsky I was only 23, and everyone talked about that,” Mr. Cliburn said in 2008. “But I felt like I had been at this thing for 20 years already. It was thrilling to be wanted. But it was pressure, too.”
His subsequent explorations of wider repertory grew increasingly insecure. During the 1960s he played less and less. By 1978 he had retired from the stage; he returned in 1989, but performed rarely. Ultimately, his promise and potential were never fulfilled, but his great talent was apparent early on.
Harvey Lavan Cliburn Jr. was born in Shreveport, La., on July 12, 1934. His mother, Rildia Bee O’Bryan, a pianist who had studied in New York with Arthur Friedheim, a longtime student of Liszt, had hoped to have a career in music, but her mother forbade it. Instead she married Harvey Lavan Cliburn, a purchasing agent for an oil company, a laconic man of moderate income.
An only child, Van started studying with his mother when he was 3. By 4 he was playing in student recitals. When he was 6 the family moved to Kilgore, Tex. (population 10,500). Although Van’s father had hoped his son would become a medical missionary, he realized that the boy was destined for music, so he added a practice studio to the garage.
As a plump 13-year-old Mr. Cliburn won a statewide competition to perform with the Houston Symphony and he played the Tchaikovsky concerto. Thinking her son should study with a more well-connected and advanced teacher, Mr. Cliburn’s mother took him to New York, where he attended master classes at Juilliard and was offered a scholarship to the school’s preparatory division. But Van adamantly refused to study with anyone but his mother, so they returned to Kilgore.
He spoke with affecting respect for his mother’s excellence as a teacher and attributed the lyrical elegance of his playing to her. “My mother had a gorgeous singing voice,” he said. “She always told me that the first instrument is the human voice. When you are playing the piano, it is not digital. You must find a singing sound — the ‘eye of the sound,’ she called it.”
By 16 he had shot up to 6 feet 4 inches. Excruciatingly self-conscious, he was excused from athletics out of fear that he might injure his hands. He later recalled his adolescence outside the family as “a living hell.”
On graduation at 17 he finally accepted a scholarship from Juilliard and moved to New York. Studying with the Russian-born piano pedagogue Rosina Lhevinne, he entered the diploma rather than the degree program to spare himself from having to take 60 semester hours of academic credits. Even his close friends said he displayed little intellectual curiosity outside of music.
Winning the Leventritt award in 1954 was a major achievement. Though held annually, the competition had not given a prize in three years because the judges had not deemed any contestant worthy. But this panel, which included Rudolf Serkin, George Szell and Leonard Bernstein, was united in its assessment of Mr. Cliburn.
That same year he graduated from Juilliard and was to have begun graduate-level studies. But performing commitments as a result of the Leventritt kept him on tour.
In 1957 he was inducted into the Army but released after two days because he was found to be prone to nosebleeds. By this point, despite his success, his career was stagnating and he was $7,000 in debt. His managers at Columbia Artists wanted him to undertake a European tour. But Ms. Lhevinne encouraged him instead to enter the first Tchaikovsky competition.
A $1,000 grant from the Martha Baird Rockefeller Aid to Music program made the journey to the Soviet Union possible. The contestants’ Moscow expenses were paid by the Soviet government.
A Darling of the Russians
Van Cliburn, Cold War Musical Envoy, Dies at 78
Published: February 27, 2013 227 Comments
(Page 3 of 4)
The Russian people warmed to Mr. Cliburn from the preliminary rounds. There was something endearing about the contrast between his gawky boyishness and his complete absorption while performing. At the piano he bent far back from the keys, staring into space, his head tilted in a kind of pained ecstasy. During rapid-fire passages he would lean in close, almost scowling at his fingers. On the night of the final round, when Mr. Cliburn performed the Tchaikovsky First Concerto, a solo work by Dmitry Kabalevsky (written as a test piece for the competition) and the Rachmaninoff Third Concerto, the audience broke into chants of “First prize! First prize!” Emil Gilels, one of the judges, went backstage to embrace him.
James Hill for The New York Times
MUSICAL ENVOY In Moscow in 2011 to serve as the honorary chairman of the International Tchaikovsky Competition. More Photos »
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PERFORMER In Moscow in 2004 playing at a memorial concert. More Photos »
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"That picture of him with his hands over his heart is the essence of the poetry of his life. With hands and heart he changed the world."C T, austria
The jury agreed with the public, and Moscow celebrated. At a Kremlin reception, Mr. Cliburn was bearhugged by Khrushchev. “Why are you so tall?” Khrushchev asked. “Because I am from Texas,” Mr. Cliburn answered.
His prize consisted of 25,000 rubles (about $2,500), though he was permitted to take only half of that out of the country. Immediately, concert offers for enormous fees engulfed him.
His income for the 1958-59 concert season topped $150,000. His postcompetition concert at Carnegie Hall on May 19, 1958, with Kiril Kondrashin and the Symphony of the Air, repeating the program from the final round, was broadcast over WQXR. He signed a contract with RCA Victor, and his recording of the Tchaikovsky First Concerto sold over a million copies within a year.
Reviewing that recording in The Times in 1958, the critic Harold C. Schonberg wrote, “Cliburn stands revealed as a pianist whose potentialities have fused into a combination of uncommon virtuosity and musicianship.” Yet Mr. Schonberg had reservations even then: “If there is one thing lacking in this performance it is the final touch of flexibility that can come only with years of public experience.”
An idolatrous biography, “The Van Cliburn Legend,” written by the pianist and composer Abram Chasins, with Villa Stiles, was published in 1959. Mr. Chasins used Mr. Cliburn’s Moscow victory as a club to attack the American cultural system for neglecting its own.
Nothing could diminish Mr. Cliburn’s popularity in the late 1950s. He earned a then-stunning $5,000 for a pair of concerts at the Hollywood Bowl, and played with the Moscow State Symphony at Madison Square Garden for an audience of over 16,000.
Yet as early as 1959 his attempts to broaden his repertory were not well received. That year, for a New York Philharmonic benefit concert at Carnegie Hall conducted by Bernstein, Mr. Cliburn played the Mozart Piano Concerto No. 25, the Schumann Concerto and the Prokofiev Third Concerto. Howard Taubman, reviewing the program in The Times, called the Mozart performance “almost a total disappointment.” Only the Prokofiev was successful, he wrote, praising the brashness, exuberance and crispness of the playing.
Reviewing a 1961 performance of Beethoven’s “Emperor” Concerto by Mr. Cliburn with the Philadelphia Orchestra under Eugene Ormandy, Mr. Schonberg wrote, “It was the playing of an old-young man, but without the spirit of youth or the mellowness of age.” Mr. Cliburn performed the Rachmaninoff Third Concerto yet again, with the Philadelphia Orchestra, for the inaugural week of Philharmonic Hall (now Avery Fisher Hall) in 1962.
Despite the criticism, Mr. Cliburn tried to expand his repertory, playing concertos by MacDowell and Prokofiev and solo works by Samuel Barber (the demanding Piano Sonata), Chopin, Brahms, Beethoven and Liszt. But the artistic growth and maturity that were expected of him never fully came. Even as a personality, Mr. Cliburn began to seem out of step. In the late 1950s this baby-faced, teetotaling, churchgoing, wholesome Texan had fit the times. But to young Americans of the late 1960s he seemed a strained, stiff representative of the demonized establishment.
A New Competition
Van Cliburn, Cold War Musical Envoy, Dies at 78
Published: February 27, 2013 227 Comments
(Page 4 of 4)
Many subsequent pianists tried to emulate Mr. Cliburn’s path to success through international competition victories. But a significant number of critics and teachers took to castigating the premise and value of competitions as an encouragement of faceless virtuosity, superficial brilliance and inoffensive interpretations. Nevertheless, in 1962, some arts patrons and business leaders in the Fort Worth area, to honor their hometown hero, inaugurated the Van Cliburn International Piano Competition. It remains the most lucrative and visible of these contests.
*****
Harvey Lavan "Van" Cliburn, Jr., (/ˈklaɪbÉœrn/; July 12, 1934 – February 27, 2013) was an American pianist who achieved worldwide recognition in 1958 at the age of 23, when he won the first quadrennial International Tchaikovsky Piano Competition in Moscow at the height of the Cold War.[1][2]
His mother, an accomplished pianist who had studied under a student of Franz Liszt, discovered him playing at age three and mimicking one of her students. She began his own lessons.[1] He developed a rich, round tone and a singing voice-like phrasing, having been taught from the start to sing each piece.[1]
Van Cliburn toured domestically and overseas. He played for royalty, heads of state, and every U.S. president from Harry S. Truman to Barack Obama.[3]
Honored in New York City, Cliburn told the audience:
RCA Victor signed him to an exclusive contract, and his subsequent recording of the Tchaikovsky Piano Concerto No. 1 became the first classical album to go platinum.[13] It was the best-selling classical album in the world for more than a decade, eventually going triple-platinum. Cliburn won the 1958 Grammy Award for Best Classical Performance for this recording. In 2004, this recording was re-mastered from the original studio analogue tapes, and released on a Super Audio CD.
Other standard repertoire Cliburn recorded include the Schumann Piano Concerto in A minor, Grieg Piano Concerto in A minor, Rachmaninoff Piano Concerto No. 2, Beethoven Piano Concerto No. 4 and No. 5 "Emperor", and the Prokofiev Piano Concerto No. 3.
In 1958, during a dinner hosted by the National Guild of Piano Teachers,[14] President and Founder Dr. Irl Allison announced a cash prize of $10,000 to be used for a piano competition named in Van Cliburn’s honor. Under the leadership of Grace Ward Lankford and with the dedicated efforts of local music teachers and volunteers, the First Van Cliburn International Piano Competition was held from September 24 to October 7, 1962, at Texas Christian University in Fort Worth.[6] Until his death, Cliburn continued to serve as Director Emeritus for the Van Cliburn Foundation, as host of the quadrennial competition and host of other programs honoring his legacy.
In 1961 he first performed at the Interlochen Center for the Arts during its summer camp. He went on to do so for eighteen more years, his last visit to the school being in 2006.
Cliburn returned to the former Soviet Union on several occasions.[6] His performances were usually recorded and even televised. In a 1962 Moscow appearance, Nikita Khrushchev, who met Van Cliburn again on this visit,[9] and Andrei Gromyko, the Soviet Foreign Minister, were "spotted in the audience applauding enthusiastically".[15] According to The Wall Street Journal, "Mr. Cliburn's affection for the Soviet people—and theirs for him—was notable in its warmth during a prolonged period of superpower strain."[1] A 1972 concert performance of the Brahms Piano Concerto No. 2 with Kondrashin and the Moscow orchestra, as well as a studio recording of Rachmaninoff's Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini, were later issued on CD by RCA Victor.[16]
On May 26, 1972, Cliburn gave a concert at Spaso House, the residence of the United States Ambassador to Russia, for an audience that included President Richard Nixon, Secretary of State William P. Rogers, and Soviet government officials.
He played for royalty and heads of state from dozens of countries and for every U.S. president since 1958.[17]
Van Cliburn Way in the Fort Worth Cultural District
Cliburn received the Kennedy Center Honors in 2001. He was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2003 by then President George W. Bush, and, in October 2004, the Russian Order of Friendship, the highest civilian awards of the two countries. He was also awarded the Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award the same year and played at a surprise 50th birthday party for United States Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice. He was a member of the Alpha Chi Chapter of Phi Mu Alpha Sinfonia, and was awarded the fraternity's Charles E. Lutton Man of Music Award in 1962. He was presented a 2010 National Medal of Arts by President Barack Obama.[17]
Cliburn's 1958 piano performance in Moscow when he won the prestigious Tchaikovsky International Piano Competition has been added to the National Recording Registry in the Library of Congress on March 21, 2013 for long-term preservation.[18]
Cliburn was known as a night owl. He often practiced until 4:30 or 5 a.m., waking around 1:30 p.m.[21] "You feel like you're alone and the world's asleep, and it's very inspiring."[22]
On August 27, 2012, Cliburn's publicist announced that the pianist had advanced bone cancer. He underwent treatment and was "resting comfortably at home" in Fort Worth, where he received around-the-clock care.[23][24] Cliburn died on February 27, 2013, at the age of seventy-eight.[25]
Cliburn was a member of Broadway Baptist Church in Fort Worth and attended regularly when he was in town.[26] His services were held on March 3, 2013, at the Broadway Baptist Church with entombment at Greenwood Memorial Park Mausoleum in Fort Worth.[11] His obituary lists as his only survivor his "friend of longstanding", Thomas J. Smith.[11]
The Wall Street Journal said on his death that Cliburn was a "cultural hero" who "rocketed to unheard-of stardom for a classical musician in the U.S."[1] Calling him "the rare classical musician to enjoy rock star status", the Associated Press on his death noted the 1958 Time magazine cover story that likened him to "Horowitz, Liberace and Presley all rolled into one".[7]
*****
*****
Harvey Lavan "Van" Cliburn, Jr., (/ˈklaɪbÉœrn/; July 12, 1934 – February 27, 2013) was an American pianist who achieved worldwide recognition in 1958 at the age of 23, when he won the first quadrennial International Tchaikovsky Piano Competition in Moscow at the height of the Cold War.[1][2]
His mother, an accomplished pianist who had studied under a student of Franz Liszt, discovered him playing at age three and mimicking one of her students. She began his own lessons.[1] He developed a rich, round tone and a singing voice-like phrasing, having been taught from the start to sing each piece.[1]
Van Cliburn toured domestically and overseas. He played for royalty, heads of state, and every U.S. president from Harry S. Truman to Barack Obama.[3]
Contents
[hide]Biography[edit]
Early life[edit]
Cliburn was born in Shreveport in northwestern Louisiana, and at age three began taking piano lessons from his mother, the former Rildia Bee O'Bryan, who had studied under Arthur Friedheim,[4] a pupil of Franz Liszt.[1] When Cliburn was six, his father, who worked in the oil industry,[5] moved the family to Kilgore near Longview in east Texas. At the age of twelve, Cliburn won a statewide piano competition, which enabled him to debut with the Houston Symphony Orchestra.[6] He entered the Juilliard School in New York City at the age of seventeen[6] and studied under Rosina Lhévinne,[6] who trained him in the tradition of the great Russian romantics. At twenty, Cliburn won the Leventritt Award[6] and made his Carnegie Hall debut.Moscow[edit]
It was his recognition in Moscow that propelled Cliburn to international prominence.[7] The first International Tchaikovsky Competition in 1958 was an event designed to demonstrate Soviet cultural superiority during the Cold War, on the heels of that country's technological victory with the Sputnik launch in October 1957. Cliburn's performance at the competition finale of Tchaikovsky's Piano Concerto No. 1 and Rachmaninoff's Piano Concerto No. 3 on April 13 earned him a standing ovation lasting eight minutes.[2][8] When it was time to announce a winner, the judges were obliged to ask permission of the Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev to give first prize to an American. "Is he the best?" Khrushchev asked. "Then give him the prize!"[2][9] Cliburn returned home to a ticker-tape parade in New York City, the only time the honor has been accorded a classical musician. His cover story in Time magazine proclaimed him "The Texan Who Conquered Russia".[10]Honored in New York City, Cliburn told the audience:
I appreciate more than you will ever know that you are honoring me, but the thing that thrills me the most is that you are honoring classical music. Because I'm only one of many. I'm only a witness and a messenger. Because I believe so much in the beauty, the construction, the architecture invisible, the importance for all generations, for young people to come that it will help their minds, develop their attitudes, and give them values. That is why I'm so grateful that you have honored me in that spirit.[11]
Success[edit]
Upon returning to the United States, Cliburn appeared in a Carnegie Hall concert with the Symphony of the Air, conducted by Kirill Kondrashin, who had led the Moscow Philharmonic in the prize-winning performances in Moscow.[6] The performance of the Rachmaninoff 3rd Piano Concerto at this concert was subsequently released by RCA Victor on LP. Cliburn was also invited by Steve Allen to play a solo during Allen's prime time NBC television series on May 25, 1958.[12]RCA Victor signed him to an exclusive contract, and his subsequent recording of the Tchaikovsky Piano Concerto No. 1 became the first classical album to go platinum.[13] It was the best-selling classical album in the world for more than a decade, eventually going triple-platinum. Cliburn won the 1958 Grammy Award for Best Classical Performance for this recording. In 2004, this recording was re-mastered from the original studio analogue tapes, and released on a Super Audio CD.
Other standard repertoire Cliburn recorded include the Schumann Piano Concerto in A minor, Grieg Piano Concerto in A minor, Rachmaninoff Piano Concerto No. 2, Beethoven Piano Concerto No. 4 and No. 5 "Emperor", and the Prokofiev Piano Concerto No. 3.
In 1958, during a dinner hosted by the National Guild of Piano Teachers,[14] President and Founder Dr. Irl Allison announced a cash prize of $10,000 to be used for a piano competition named in Van Cliburn’s honor. Under the leadership of Grace Ward Lankford and with the dedicated efforts of local music teachers and volunteers, the First Van Cliburn International Piano Competition was held from September 24 to October 7, 1962, at Texas Christian University in Fort Worth.[6] Until his death, Cliburn continued to serve as Director Emeritus for the Van Cliburn Foundation, as host of the quadrennial competition and host of other programs honoring his legacy.
In 1961 he first performed at the Interlochen Center for the Arts during its summer camp. He went on to do so for eighteen more years, his last visit to the school being in 2006.
Cliburn returned to the former Soviet Union on several occasions.[6] His performances were usually recorded and even televised. In a 1962 Moscow appearance, Nikita Khrushchev, who met Van Cliburn again on this visit,[9] and Andrei Gromyko, the Soviet Foreign Minister, were "spotted in the audience applauding enthusiastically".[15] According to The Wall Street Journal, "Mr. Cliburn's affection for the Soviet people—and theirs for him—was notable in its warmth during a prolonged period of superpower strain."[1] A 1972 concert performance of the Brahms Piano Concerto No. 2 with Kondrashin and the Moscow orchestra, as well as a studio recording of Rachmaninoff's Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini, were later issued on CD by RCA Victor.[16]
On May 26, 1972, Cliburn gave a concert at Spaso House, the residence of the United States Ambassador to Russia, for an audience that included President Richard Nixon, Secretary of State William P. Rogers, and Soviet government officials.
Comeback[edit]
Cliburn performed and recorded through the 1970s, but in 1978, after the deaths of his father and manager, began a hiatus from public life. In 1987, he was invited to perform at the White House for President Ronald Reagan and Soviet president Mikhail Gorbachev,[1] and afterward was invited to open the 100th anniversary season of Carnegie Hall. He embarked on a 16-city tour in 1994, commencing with a performance of the Tchaikovsky concerto at the Hollywood Bowl. Also in 1994, Cliburn made a guest appearance in the cartoon Iron Man, playing himself in the episode "Silence My Companion, Death My Destination". In his late seventies, he gave a limited number of performances to critical and popular acclaim. Cliburn appeared as a Pennington Great Performers series artist with the Baton Rouge Symphony Orchestra in 2006. In 2006 he performed at Interlochen Center for the Arts, spending two hours talking to the students afterwards and signing their programs while many waited at a reception at the schools' presidents' house.He played for royalty and heads of state from dozens of countries and for every U.S. president since 1958.[17]
Honors[edit]
Cliburn's 1958 piano performance in Moscow when he won the prestigious Tchaikovsky International Piano Competition has been added to the National Recording Registry in the Library of Congress on March 21, 2013 for long-term preservation.[18]
Personal life and death[edit]
In 1998, Cliburn was named in a lawsuit by his domestic partner of seventeen years, mortician Thomas Zaremba.[19] In the suit, Zaremba claimed entitlement to a portion of Cliburn's income and assets and asserted that he may have been exposed to HIV, causing emotional distress. The claims were rebutted by a trial court and upheld by an appellate court,[20] on the basis that palimony suits are not permitted in the state of Texas unless the relationship is based on a written agreement.Cliburn was known as a night owl. He often practiced until 4:30 or 5 a.m., waking around 1:30 p.m.[21] "You feel like you're alone and the world's asleep, and it's very inspiring."[22]
On August 27, 2012, Cliburn's publicist announced that the pianist had advanced bone cancer. He underwent treatment and was "resting comfortably at home" in Fort Worth, where he received around-the-clock care.[23][24] Cliburn died on February 27, 2013, at the age of seventy-eight.[25]
Cliburn was a member of Broadway Baptist Church in Fort Worth and attended regularly when he was in town.[26] His services were held on March 3, 2013, at the Broadway Baptist Church with entombment at Greenwood Memorial Park Mausoleum in Fort Worth.[11] His obituary lists as his only survivor his "friend of longstanding", Thomas J. Smith.[11]
The Wall Street Journal said on his death that Cliburn was a "cultural hero" who "rocketed to unheard-of stardom for a classical musician in the U.S."[1] Calling him "the rare classical musician to enjoy rock star status", the Associated Press on his death noted the 1958 Time magazine cover story that likened him to "Horowitz, Liberace and Presley all rolled into one".[7]
*****
Courtesy of Van Cliburn Foundation, via Associated Press
BEARHUG Mr. Cliburn with Nikita S. Khrushchev after winning the competition in Moscow in 1958.More Photos »
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Times Topic: Van Cliburn
Playing When He Wants, and Remembering (July 30, 2000)
A sortable calendar of noteworthy cultural events in the New York region, selected by Times critics.
Chang W. Lee/The New York Times
Van Cliburn last year with the 100-year-old Steinway concert grand that he grew up playing. More Photos »
Readers’ Comments
"That picture of him with his hands over his heart is the essence of the poetry of his life. With hands and heart he changed the world."C T, austria
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