VAN CLIBURN INTERNATIONAL PIANO COMPETITION. The Van Cliburn International Piano Competition is a world-class performance contest for young professional pianists held every four years in Fort Worth. The competition was originated by Irl Allison Sr.,qv who formed the Van Cliburn Foundation for the purpose.
Allison had long supported excellence in piano playing—as a pianist, as a piano teacher, and especially as the founder of the National Guild of Piano Teachers.qv This organization sponsors the National Piano Playing Auditions, a program that brings professional musicians to cities and towns all over the country to judge the performance of students. The occasion for the founding of the Cliburn Foundation was Van Cliburn's winning the Tchaikovsky Competition in Moscow in 1958; victory in this contest is one of the most coveted and prestigious achievements to which a young pianist can aspire. When Cliburn won, he was widely hailed as a major cultural ambassador whose influence would help to nullify the Cold War.
Cliburn's fame was Allison's opportunity. At a dinner in Fort Worth, Allison and Mrs. Grace Ward Lankford brought together a group with interest in supporting young artists through an annual contest to be held in Fort Worth. They got the Chamber of Commerce and the local piano teachers involved. Allison announced the contest in 1958, and the first competition was held in 1962.
The contest is in effect a final competition in which thirty or so of the world's best young pianists compete. Contestants cannot be older than twenty-nine. Before they come to Fort Worth, they have already won the right to do so in preliminary competitions in their own countries. In 2001, after six preliminary screenings in the Netherlands, Hungary, Russia, New York, and Chicago, 137 musicians were invited to Fort Worth for a seventh and final screening. The 137 were trimmed down to thirty after each played a solo recital judged by a panel of professional musicians and music educators. These thirty competed in the Cliburn Competition per se. Twelve of them advanced to the semifinals, and from the semifinals six emerged as finalists. Usually three medals are awarded to the winners of the final contest, but on occasion ties have been rewarded with dual medals; in 2001, for instance, the jury bestowed the gold medal on two performers.
Over the years the performance required of contestants has varied. Originally, all were required to play the same commissioned work by an American composer, as well as chamber works performed with local professionals and concertos performed with the Fort Worth Chamber Orchestra and the Fort Worth Symphony Orchestra. In 2001 the contestants had a choice from several American works chosen by the jury. The Cliburn Competition has rightly been noted for supporting American composers, some of whom have been brought to prominence through the contest.
For several decades the opening performances of the contest took place at Ed Landreth Hall on the Texas Christian Universityqv campus, with the final rounds occurring at the Tarrant County Convention Center. In 2001 the contest was moved to the new Bass Concert Hall in downtown Fort Worth. That year the monetary award for the gold medal winner was $20,000—double the amount of the first competition in 1962. The other benefits of winning, however, amount to far more. These include publicity and, most importantly, a big round of concert-management services through which the winners acquire a busy schedule of performances.
Logistics for the contest are formidable. They include transportation of contestants and judges, the lodging of contestants with host families, the acquisition and distribution of music to orchestra and jury members (sometimes the selected works are not published yet, and in these cases manuscripts must be photocopied), and many other demands. A "pit crew" of piano tuners is essential.
Perhaps the most famous of the Cliburn gold medalists is Radu Lupu (1966), originally from Romania and now resident in London; though Jon Nakamatsu of Japan, who won the 1997 competition, shows great promise. The most famous "nonwinner" is said to be Barry Douglas of Northern Ireland, who finished third in the 1985 contest but later won the Leeds Competition in England and became a quite successful concert pianist. The youngest winner of the competition was Alexei Sultanov of Uzbekistan, who was only nineteen when he took the gold medal in 1989. Catastrophically, a mere eleven years later a series of strokes quelled his "fiery virtuosity" and canceled his career. Stanislav Ioudenitch, one of the gold medal winners in 2001 (the other was Olga Kern of Russia), had to drop out of the 1997 contest because he burned his hand with boiling water. The 2001 contest also featured the first brother–sister contestants, Koreans Jong Hwa Park and his younger sister, Jong-Gyung Park.
The Cliburn Foundation has greatly enlarged its activities since 1958. It added a film festival to the 2001 competition. Chief among the foundation's other recent new activities is an International Piano Competition for Outstanding Amateurs, which began in 1999 and since 2000 has been held every two years. This contest is open to serious musicians who make their living at something besides music. Participants have included a massage therapist, a news producer, an astrologer, doctors, lawyers, housewives, and computer specialists.
The Cliburn naturally has its detractors. Some say that the structure itself, of chosen contestants performing in a high-stakes contest before an ad hoc panel of professional judges and the glaring eye of the media, leads to rewarding empty virtuosity. Others, however, say that real virtuosity is never empty, but is a product of heart as well as head and hand. Press coverage fell off slightly for the 2001 competition, though the New York Times music critic—the most prominent defector—allows that the Times might not skip future Cliburns. Although an affair as big as the Cliburn could hardly be without flaws, the spectacular contest continues to bring together large audiences and first-rate talent, and to enrich both Fort Worth and the state of Texas.
BIBLIOGRAPHY: Dallas Morning News, February 21, April 4, April 10, May 25, May 29, June 1, June 5, June 6, June 11, 2001; June 4, November 15, 2002. Van Cliburn Foundation homepage (www.cliburn.org/), accessed April 2, 2003.
Roy R. Barkley
