Word: rachmaninoff
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...hero's welcome back to the U.S. with a ticker-tape parade up Broadway. He will go to Washington to be received by the President of the U.S. His first post-Russia concert (in which he will repeat his Moscow prizewinning pieces: Tchaikovsky's Concerto No. 1, Rachmaninoff's Concerto No. 3) has swamped Carnegie Hall with the heaviest demand for tickets in all its glittering history...
...when he sits down to play. Pianist Sviatoslav Richter, whom the Russians regard as their best, dubbed Van "a genius -a word I do not use lightly about performers." In tears of emotion Pianist Emil Gilels grabbed Van as he came off the stage after playing Rachmaninoff's Third Concerto, bussed him soundly on both cheeks. To Composer Aram Khachaturian, Van was "better than Rachmaninoff; you find a virtuoso like this only once or twice in a century." France's Marquis de Gontaut-Biron, a frequent judge of piano contests, found that Van had "almost the technique...
...hours-a-day practice. During this period he may have sharpened some of the qualities that confounded Moscow critics: emotional nuances and inflections such as are normally heard only from string players; the special ghostly sonority that he can draw from the piano, as in the first movement of Rachmaninoff's Concerto No. 3; fast passages that combine a feathery sound with perfect, unblurred articulation...
Snapped String. In the finals, which matched him against eight other pianists -including three top-rated Russians and another American, Los Angeles' Daniel Pollack, 23-the good-looking young Texan chose to play Rachmaninoff's powerful Concerto No. 3. As required of all finalists, he also played Tchaikovsky's familiar First and a rondo by Soviet Composer (and contest judge) Dmitry Kabalevsky, who wrote it for the contest...
...tautly controlled technique, the steel-fingered power and booming romantic style that had dazzled audiences in the opening rounds. Toward the end of the rondo, a piano string snapped under his bold percussive attack. He piled through the rest of the piece without faltering, rose after the final Rachmaninoff to one of the most thunderous ovations ever accorded an artist in Moscow...