Van Cliburn. "Classical music," he once said, "is sustaining and eternal."
I never had the chance to hear Van Cliburn in concert.
He performed in Oklahoma several times in his career – one of his first concerts after winning the first International Tchaikovsky Competition in Moscow in 1958 was with the Tulsa Philharmonic.
But – as had millions of others – I bought his first recording, that landmark RCA album of the Piano Concerto No. 1 by Tchaikovsky, and listened to it many times.
The energy and intensity of his playing on that recording can still send a thrill through me. Is it the best performance of this works? That I cannot say. But few renditions of this concerto affect me in quite the same way as Cliburn’s. What comes through to me is that here was an artist playing music that mattered to him tremendously, and who was able to convey that connection, that importance, to the listener.
One of Cliburn’s last appearances in this state was in 1996, when he performed as part of a gala concert for the Oklahoma City Philharmonic. For reasons that I now cannot recall – no doubt I had another show closer to home that I had to cover – I wasn’t able to attend the concert.
But I was able to spend a half hour or so talking with Van Cliburn, having one of the more courtly and pleasant conversations I’ve had with an artist of such renown.
“Classical music -- though it is interesting and enjoyable -- is not entertainment,” Cliburn said. “Entertainment is transitory. Classical music is sustaining and eternal. The reason for that is because no great piece of music is a twice-told tale.”
He referred to the recently completed 1996 Olympics, saying, “Several times during the games, we heard the same 32 bars of a piece of classical music being played – a piece of music we call ‘The Star-Spangled Banner.’ Now, I don't think anyone would call the National Anthem a work of entertainment. It's classical music, and each visitation to it produces thoughts and feelings that are very genuine and real.
“The same is true for something like the Tchaikovsky (concerto),” Cliburn said. “All you have to do is go to the text, and you understand why it is so beloved, why one can return to it again and again and discover something new – it's either the architecture of it, or its scope of expression, the clarity of the writing, the way it is crafted, the emotions it produces. That is the wonder of the spiritual value of classical music.”
