Van Cliburn in Moscow, Vol. 1

Today, it’s hard to fathom the worldwide sensation sparked by Van Cliburn’s victory in the 1958 Tchaikovsky Competition in Moscow. An American pianist winning a prestigious Russian event at the height of the Cold War made headlines everywhere and the two rival superpowers took the young Texan to their hearts, with a tickertape parade in Manhattan and frequent, sold-out tours of the Soviet Union by Cliburn during the following years. VAI has secured the original Russian television tapes of some of those concerts; this first of the series is from the Great Hall of the Moscow Conservatory in 1962, with the excellent Kirill Kondrashin leading the Moscow Philharmonic. The formal program was made up of two of the most popular concertos in the repertory. The Beethoven Emperor Concerto features Cliburn’s big, bold tone and exquisite phrasing; his magisterial entrance is riveting and the meaningful trills Beethoven sprinkled throughout the work are done with pristine exactitude. The Tchaikovsky Concerto--Cliburn’s signature piece--is even better; the massive opening chords thrilling, ample poetry in the slow movement and, as in the Beethoven, truly stunning legato playing. Also worthy are the two encores--Chopin’s Fantasy in F minor, given with a mixture of power and poetry, and Liszt’s Hungarian Rhapsody No. 12, brimming with excitement and pianistic mastery. Kondrashin’s orchestral accompaniments in the concertos are exemplary, well-paced and matching Cliburn’s keyboard approach. The mono sound is barely acceptable, with occasional patches of distortion, and if the grainy picture quality is an indication of Soviet TV quality at the time, they had a long way to go. But this DVD scores on two levels: It’s an important historical document (Khruschev, Mikoyan and Gromyko are in the audience) and it’s an important reminder of Cliburn’s musical prowess at the time. --Dan Davis