A young Texan parted the Iron Curtain with music a generation ago by beating the Soviets in a piano contest on their own turf at the height of the Cold War. He earned a bear hug from Premier Nikita Khrushchev in Moscow and a ticker-tape parade in New York City.
Since then, Van Cliburn has been doing quadrennial curtain calls at the internationally acclaimed piano competition named for him in this proud old Western city where cattle drives have given way lately to more cultural round- ups.
”If you have talent, that is from God; if you have a career, that is a gift from the public,” the world-renowned pianist confided to a visitor at the finals of the Seventh Van Cliburn International Piano Competition, which ends Sunday.
”To win,” Cliburn said, ”it`s an opportunity, a vehicle, a door.”
Thirty-six contestants from 17 countries came to the competition this year. The winner will receive a gold medal, $200,000 in awards and two months of bookings with orchestras such as the Chicago Symphony or at recitals around the globe, including a debut at Carnegie Hall.
This friendly city of half a million people on the Grand Prairie of northern Texas–once known as Cowtown, U.S.A., and still host to cattle auctions twice a week in its revived stockyards–is a surprising and unusual place to find a contest that is arguably among the top five of its kind in the world.
”I know a lot of people (contestants) feel that way,” acknowledged Barry Douglas, 25, from Belfast, one of six finalists in the competition.
”When I first heard about Ft. Worth, I wondered to myself, `Where`s that?`
But then I realized I know about it because of your awful television show
(Dallas).” Douglas is back for his second try at the gold.
Some in the music community ”are rather startled still, because of the image of the city,” said Andrew Raeburn, executive director of the Van Cliburn Foundation Inc., which budgeted $1.2 million for this year`s contest. ”But that`s changing, slowly,” he added. ”It takes time.”
The city`s business moguls, engaged in a major campaign to attract high-tech companies, are basking in the glow of an unprecedented national spotlight this year.
For example, Mobil Oil Corp. and Tandy Corp./Radio Shack of Ft. Worth are underwriting a 90-minute, $750,000 Public Broadcasting Service special Tuesday night on the competition–triple the cost of a similar production of the 1981 show.
”It`s got all the elements,” boasted John Stevenson, chairman of the Chamber of Commerce, summing up the piano event. ”It`s exciting. The community turns out and supports it. People get a kick out of it. It`s a world-class event.”
During the competition, the lighted sign on the Tandy Corp. building is changed to read ”PIANO MUSIC” and banners drawn by schoolchildren line city streets. Society becomes preoccupied with Beethoven and Brahms while contestants stay with Ft. Worth families who pamper them, rejoice in their successes and agonize over their defeats.
The Van Cliburn competition was established to help build careers for outstanding young pianists, starting with the first contest in 1962, but its beginnings were straight out of the Cold War.
In 1958, only months after the Soviets launched the space race by lofting Sputnik into orbit, Cliburn, then 23, stunned the world and shocked the Soviet leadership with his famous victory in the first-ever Tchaikovsky International Competition in Moscow.
Cliburn remembers Khrushchev`s surprise visit to the great Georgian hall where he was performing. ”He came in. This was very unrehearsed, unplanned. In fact he wasn`t expected back from Romania,” Cliburn recalls. ”He gave me a great hug and a kiss. . . . I was so shocked.”
The tall and curly-haired Cliburn returned to a ticker-tape parade down Broadway in Manhattan, another unusual honor.
”Van played Russian music like they had never heard of it,” explained Martha Hyder, chairman emeritus of the competition. ”The Tchaikovsky opened up and to their surprise a foreigner won. They never let that happen again,” she smiled.
When Cliburn returned to Ft. Worth, Irl Allison, founder and head of the National Guild of Piano Teachers, was preparing to launch a U.S. piano competition and decided to name it for Cliburn.
Though Cliburn has not played in public for eight years, he says he is preparing to make a comeback, though he declines to give a specific date.
Hyder is credited with helping establish the competition`s world-class reputation by securing more than 100 orchestras and recital engagements for contest medalists during her stewardship in the mid-1970s. She also worked hard to obtain the finest judges for the contests–the prime ingredient in its earning international prestige.
Comparing this competition to others, such as the one in Moscow, Douglas said: ”It`s not that it`s better or worse. I just think it`s one of the nicest of the competitions, which can all be very cutthroat. . . . It`s very friendly and warm and they all want you to do well. When you arrive, you`re important. You feel elite.”
Douglas, who won an honorable mention in 1981, views the prospect of winning as ”a great challenge and a great responsibility. Not only do you have to play each concert well, you always have to keep in mind the other winners, and people compare you to them.”
After performing piano concertos by Beethoven and Brahms in his finals at week`s end, Douglas drew an enthusiastic ovation from the crowd at the Tarrant County Convention Center theater.
Local leaders go out of their way to point out that there`s no reason a classical piano competition should not be at home alongside such stockyard attractions as Billy Bob`s Texas, billed as the world`s largest honky-tonk saloon.
And, of course, there are good ol` boys here, many of whom share the artistic opinion of one senior executive for a major Ft. Worth firm. As a party wound down on a recent night after a set of finals, he raised his glass and opined:
”. . . Pianists or competitors or whatever they are, it`s a great excuse to throw a party. Hell, otherwise we`d be in bed at 12:10 in the morning.”
