Another Young Talent Enters

Reading about Van Cliburn’s Russian triumph at the Tchaikovsky Piano Competition in 1958, on the occasion of his death last week, I was struck by how quaint and even ridiculous the Cold War scenario makes the story. As if producing a 23-year-old piano prodigy — straight from the Texas heartland, no less! — could somehow burnish America’s reputation, conquer a nation and repair the spirits of another nation psychologically diminished by a piece of orbiting metal (aka Sputnik), as one obituary suggested. Yet there it was: a ticker-tape parade down Broadway, a White House concert and a platinum album, and soon an American-based international piano competition named in his honor. By all accounts, Cliburn was humble through it all and retained a genuine affection for the Soviet people. Advancing the cause of classical music was more important to him than triumphal nationalism. Like all too many wunderkinds thrown into sudden and early stardom, Cliburn never quite seemed to realize his full potential, and lived a kind of ambivalent existence in and out of the spotlight. Although he was clearly possessed of enormous virtuosity — and enormous hands — critics were quick to savage him for his lack of musical depth and overreliance on warhorses of the repertoire, particularly the two showpieces from his Moscow sensation, the Tchaikovsky First and Rachmaninoff Third piano concertos. I saw Cliburn once in the summer of 1978 at Interlochen Music Camp in Michigan, a place with which he had a special relationship and where I was a counselor. He performed the Tchaikovsky First, and I remember even then thinking he looked stiff and played that way, too, with fumbled notes sprinkled liberally throughout. The lanky Texan with the tall crown of curly hair had already come to feel like a bit of a self-caricature. As it turned out, that was to be his last year of public appearances for nearly a decade, and from 1987 on he concertized irregularly. Nevertheless, his contributions to music through his playing, his personality, his foundation and the Van Cliburn Competition, were certainly substantial. Serendipitously, the 2009 gold medalist of the competition and the first Chinese-born winner, Haochen Zhang, will be playing next weekend with the Hudson Valley Philharmonic. Zhang was also the youngest winner ever, just 19 at the time. Of a concert in New York the previous year, The New York Times critic Allan Kozinn wrote, “[Zhang] gave a graceful, energized performance of Mozart’s Concerto No. 20 in D minor and played an elaborate set of variations on a Chinese folk theme as an encore.” For the upcoming concert, Zhang will be performing Mozart’s Piano Concerto No. 23 in A Major, K. 488, so we can expect great things. Also on the program are Beethoven’s “Fidelio” Overture and Prokofiev’s Symphony No. 5 in B-flat Major. Thinking about Prokofiev takes us full circle to the Soviet Union, the Cold War, and all that jazz, but we’ll have to save that for another day. The Hudson Valley Philharmonic “Cliburn Gold” concert featuring pianist Haochen Zhang takes place March 16, at the Bardavon in Poughkeepsie, NY. HVP music director Randall Craig Fleischer conducts. For tickets and information, call the Bardavon box office, (845) 473-2072, the UPAC box office, (845) 339-6088, or Ticketmaster, (800) 745-3000; or go to www.bardavon.org or www.ticketmaster.com.