RIP Vanya

RIP Vanya

in memory of Van Cliburn

2/27/13

A musical giant fell today.

Van Cliburn defined a generation--in fact he set a path for all pianists after him.

"The American Sputnik" launched careers and music competitions.  The Van Cliburn International Competition has been overseeing emerging pianists as one of the most prestigious competitions the world through.  Richard Rodzinski, the director of that competition for more than 2 decades is now the general director of the Tchaikovsky Competition.  It's a direct line.

Two things happened after Van Cliburn (Vanya) won the Tchaikovsky in 1958.  Well, three really.  First obviously is that Van Cliburn became a household name in America and elsewhere (including Israel, where I was at the time 7 years old and had started learning piano).  What that meant was a cultural phenomenon on Elvis Presley and the Beatles' level.  He became the first classical musician who was a superstar, a position that many aspire to but few really reach--yet one which is difficult to sustain for long.  So many have reached it since, and so many have fallen along the way.

Van Cliburn's star blazed and left an indelible mark on culture.

From his time on, pianists practiced differently, and they listened to a new beat out there.  There would be greater clarity in the playing, greater precision of performance, both technically and musically.  Music always listens to other forms of itself and informs itself with the idiom of the time.  It's only natural that music composed and performed in the second half of the twentieth century reflected mechanization, a steadier beat and a more explosive musical vocabulary.  Softer emotions were not necessarily part of this idiom.

Russian pianists emulated the technical prodigiousness of Van Cliburn, and do so still.  So did Juilliard, the leading music school in the US.

A new style of piano playing emerged after Van Cliburn won the Tchaikovsky.  It wasn't out of historical context, of course.  From its inception in the mid-1700's, the history of piano playing shows increase in virtuosic demand.  Exercises became etudes, and these became more than just finger practice.  Etudes--grand, symphonic, transcendental--became musical gems in their own right.  The art of virtuosic performance developed to an unprecedented extent in the second half of the 20th century, perhaps at the expense of the kind of emotional commitment that earlier interpreters had shown.

It's an age-old conflict between form and content, and somewhere inbetween the two lies art.

What Van Cliburn gave to the Russians and the rest of the world was a new interpretation of the grand romantics, and though it was fresh and technically brilliant, it was also steeped in the old romanticism.  His Tchaikovsky Concerto performance shows a budding romanticism unburdened by the angst of the Old World.  It is fresh and supple playing, and it's no wonder the Russians went totally wild for him.  Van Clibusn gave them what Elvis gave us.

What happened in the twenty years since his explosive performance in Moscow and his retirement in 1978 (there were "comebacks" as well as a sort of command performance here and there)?

Some say that he was a perfectionist and could never reach the standard he set for himself, so he was never happy with his playing.

Some say that he was burned out.  you can only do so many concerts a year.  There are only so many times you can play certain pieces before losing interest and becoming bored with them.  And boredom, as we know, is the first sin of music making.

There's much more that can be said of Van Cliburn's playing, and I'm sure much more will be said in the next few weeks, months and probably years.

Thanks for inspiring so many of us, Mr. Cliburn.  We are full of respect for you and grateful for what you've done for us.

Rest in Peace.

(c) 2013 by Boaz D. Heilman