The Return of Van Cliburn

By Otto Friedrich

"I never abandoned the stage, I never left the stage, I only took time," said Van Cliburn, who had not appeared in a public concert or made a recording in nearly eleven years. It was 2:30 a.m., Cliburn's favored hour for interviews, since he usually sleeps from 5 in the morning to 1 in the afternoon. As he talked about his return to the stage that he had never left, he grew increasingly adamant. "I never retired, and I don't think that classical musicians do. It's unthinkable."

The legendary pianist, who became a cold war hero by his spectacular victory at the Tchaikovsky International Competition in Moscow in 1958, reappeared at the Mann Music Center in Philadelphia last week, and it all seemed true. He had not retired. The previous eleven years melted away; indeed, the previous 31 years melted away. The lanky 6-ft. 4-in. frame had filled out a bit, and the wavy blond hair was now speckled with gray, but when Cliburn, 54, once again sailed into the Tchaikovsky Concerto No. 1 in B-Flat Minor, he demonstrated that neither age nor idleness had diminished his extraordinary technique. The thundering octaves still thundered; the glittering passage-work still glittered. More important, he played this mindlessly beautiful showpiece with a lifetime of love.

Understandably so. It was the first concerto he ever learned, at age 12, under the watchful eye of his mother. It won him first place in a statewide Texas competition. He played it again to win the Leventritt Award in 1954 and again in Moscow. After his ticker-tape parade up Broadway, his debut recording became the first classical disk ever to reach sales of $1 million, and it featured, of course, the dear old Tchaikovsky.

Even then, even among admiring critics, there were grumblings about his reluctance to develop a broader repertoire. "The young man will have to make up his mind," said one, "whether he wants to be an artist or a flesh-and- blood jukebox." Though Cliburn went on performing as many as 100 concerts a year for the next two decades (which did include some Mozart, Chopin, Prokofiev), the authoritative New Grove Dictionary has summed up his fading career by saying that "he could not cope with the loss of freshness; his . . . playing took on affectations . . . He stopped performing in 1978."

He first thought about stopping in 1974, when his father died, and then his manager, Sol Hurok. "I adored both of them," he says. "It was really quite a blow." And the virtuoso circuit was exhausting. "The life of a musician is the most solitary life. Sometimes I did find it very difficult." Cliburn never made any sharp break, just gradually stopped accepting new engagements, spent more time visiting friends (he lives with his mother, Rildia Bee, now 92), composing piano pieces, buying English antiques, presiding over the quadrennial piano competition that bears his name, working out, enjoying himself. "I am the furthest thing from a recluse," he says. And somehow the first year off stretched into eleven. Then what inspired his return to the stage? "I don't know," he says. "I was invited. I think I'll just ease into the water."

Still reliving the past, he plans to perform in Moscow on July 2-3. And there is talk of new recordings. Pressed for details, Cliburn shuts off the questions by turning to poetry. "I have been writing poetry," he says. "Oh, listen, from the time I was 14, I've loved poetry. Lord Byron is a great favorite of mine. 'Who can curiously behold/ The smoothness and the sheen of beauty's cheek,/ Nor feel the heart can never all grow old?' "

With reporting by Denise Worrell/Fort Worth