American pianist Van Cliburn gained worldwide fame at the age of 23 when in the middle of the Cold War he won the first Tchaikovsky Competition in Moscow. It made him a star not only in his homeland but also in the Soviet Union where Communist leaders were among enthusiastic audiences. He performed around the world and recorded a lengthy canon of albums over several decades with ten Grammy Award nominations and two wins plus a Lifetime Achievement Award. He left a lasting legacy with the Van Cliburn organisation, which operates educational programmes, presents concerts and runs competitions including the quadrennial Van Cliburn International Piano Competition.
He played music as a child and performed with the Houston Symphony Orchestra before attending the Juilliard School in New York. Victory in the prestigious Leventritt Award led to performances with symphony orchestras and when he came out on top in Moscow, he became an instant celebrity. He had played piano concertos by Tchaikovsky and Rachmaninov at the competition and he toured the world with those works. His recording of the Tchaikovsky piece earned him two Grammy Award nominations and he won for Best Classical Performance in 1958.
He went on to record all the popular piano concertos by composers such as Beethoven, Brahms, Chopin, Liszt, Mozart, Prokofiev and Rachmaninov. His appearances diminished following the deaths of his father and manager and he died in 2013 at the age of 78.
