Word: plays
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...Hell." At a plump twelve, he made his orchestral debut with the Houston Symphony as a winner of a statewide young pianists' competition, played Tchaikovsky's B Flat Concerto. The same year he played in Carnegie Hall as the Texas winner of the National Music Festival's nationwide competition to uncover talented junior soloists. Mamma Cliburn ferried him out to California to play for Jose Iturbi, and Iturbi promptly proclaimed him "the most talented youngster I've heard...
...hell." He had reached his full 6 ft. 4 in. (size 12 shoes) by the time he was 14, and he was excruciatingly selfconscious; he is still convinced that he has "no looks." More important, Van was a musician. "You can't love music enough to want to play it," he says, "without other kids thinking you're queer or something...
...knock at her studio door one day to find it filled with Van's rawboned frame. "Honey," he announced, "Ah'm goin' to study with you." It was the first time she had heard the name Cliburn, but she invited him in and asked him to play. Says Mrs. Lhevinne: "Right then I said. 'This is an unbelievable talent.' His mother had taught him very well indeed." She took him as a pupil, and he took the Juilliard's "diploma," or conservatory course (as opposed to the "degree" course, which requires 60 semester hours...
...people making money out of me." But as the offers came pouring in, he began to display flashes of a sound horse-trading instinct. When he heard that both Columbia Records and RCA Victor (and every other big record company) were scrambling to sign him, he told Judd to play them against each other, get him a contract "that'll guarantee that if I go in one day and want to play Clair de lune, they'll have to record it." Last week RCA Victor gave him one of the fattest contracts ever offered a young artist, with...
Perils. In developing into the major artist most people think he will become, Van could be either helped or handicapped by his Moscow triumph. It has placed him in a position to command big fees and security; it has given him the freedom to play as little or as much as he pleases, and to pick his repertory. But at the same time it has cast him in a unique musical role. "He may be the first man in history," says a friend, "to be a Horowitz, Liberace and Presley all rolled into one." What some friends worry about...