Van Clinburn Plays Sunday

Van Cliburn, the often reclusive but never disputed patriarch of American orchestral piano, swings into Massachusetts on Sunday on the last leg of a historic tour. The concert, at the Great Woods complex at 7:30 p.m., will feature Cliburn's signature piece, Tchaikovksy's Piano Concerto No. 1.

After becoming the first winner of the Tchaikovsky Competition in 1958 at age 23, Cliburn became a legned and role model for young musicians. He went on to win the Levintritt Competition, whose violin winners include celebrity players Itzhak Perlman and Pinchas Zukerman. In 1962, he founded the Van Cliburn International Piano Competition in Fort Wroth, Texas.

Cliburn has again joined forces with the Moscow Philharmonic, the orchestra that boosted his meteoric rise to stardom in the 1950s and 1960s. Cliburn's recording of Brahms' Piano Concerto No. 2 with the MPO has recently been released in the United States for the first time.

As well as offering majestic and emotional interpretations of the great Russian and German concerti--Prokofiev, Rachmaninov, Tchaikovsky, Beethoven and Brahms--Cliburn has always had a special affinity for solo piano works. His recording of Chopin have matched those of the late Artur Rubinstein and Claudio Arrau in popularity. Sunday's concert will feature Chopin's C-Sharp Minor Scherzo as well as pieces by Debussy and Szymanowski.

The MPO, under conductor vassily Sinaisky, will add a few warhorses to the program, including selections from the Tchaikovsky's "Nutcracker" Suite and the Russian and American national anthems. It appears the Sinaisky and the tour's backers hope to cater to a crowd that might be attracted most by Van Cliburn's mercurial persona.

That crowd may number as many as 20,000 for the open-air concert. Cliburn's New York appearance was staged to the Metropolitan Opera House, whose cavernous hall seems intimate when compared to the expanse of Great Woods. Hopefully, the necessary amplification of the sound will accurately represent the skill and finesse of the musicians.

Cliburn may have lost a step or two in his more than half-a-century (he first played publicity at age 4) of concertizing. The removal of Rachmaninov's monumental Third Concerto from the planned program for Sunday night may have resulted from a memory loss in an earlier tour stop. However, similar doubts followed Cliburn's almost ten-year hiatus from public playing from 1978 until 1987; they were dispelled upon his return.

At the very least, Sunday's concert will offer a glimpse of the brilliance that put the U.S. on the pianists' map for the first time. Names such as Rubinstein, Sviatoslav Richter and Jan Paderewski had dominated the piano world since the turn of the century, Many such as Rubinstein and Rudolf Serkin, eventually made their homes in this country, but Cliburn was the first native-born American to become a definitive performer of major works. He could have been remembered for his legacy or virtuosity alone, but this tour represents his valuable commitment to bringing classical music into American eyes and ears.