Piano Street's Classical Piano Blog

The 2009 edition of the Van Cliburn Piano Competition has now come to an end. Those of you who have been following the competition’s live webcasts have been able to enjoy an extensive amount of interesting performances of great piano music. If you haven’t been watching, the great news is that all performances are now available for on demand streaming from the video archive at www.cliburn.tv.

A tribute from Piano Street

At Piano Street we were amazed about the ability to have instant on demand access to all the performances, although it was not that easy to get an overview of the many pieces performed, by who and when.
So, since we are not only passionate about classical piano music but also about organizing piano music in a user friendly way, we spent the weekend putting together a little tribute to the Cliburn Competition and its participating pianists in the form of an organized repertoire list.

The list is featuring various sorting abilities as well as links to the sheet music of the pieces available from the Piano Street sheet music library.

Watch great performances online and follow along in the sheet music:
Cliburn 2009 – Competition Repertoire

Gold Medalists (tie for first):
Mr. Nobuyuki Tsujii, 20 (Japan)
Mr. Haochen Zhang, 19 (China)

Silver Medalist:
Ms. Yeol Eum Son, 23 (South Korea)

The Live Webcast
The entire Thirteenth Van Cliburn International Piano Competition was streamed in real time to tens of thousands of viewers worldwide. As of June 6, the webcast player has received 231,265 visits from people in 132 countries. The most viewed performance was Evgeni Bozhanov’s Final Round recital.

Starting May 22, all performances will be streamed live eleven hours per day and then archived for “on-demand” viewing.
http://www.cliburn.tv/

The Van Cliburn International Piano Competition was first held in 1962 in Fort Worth, Texas. It was created by Fort Worth area teachers in honor of Van Cliburn, who had won the first International Tchaikovsky Competition four years prior with Tchaikovsky’s First Piano Concerto and Rachmaninoff’s Piano Concerto No. 3. Van Cliburn was only twenty-three when he won in Moscow on April 14, 1958, at the height of the Cold War.
Upon his return to the United States, the young pianist received a hero’s welcome in New York City with a ticker-tape parade. This was the first and only time the city gave such an honor to a classical musician.
On that historic day, Van Cliburn became both cultural hero and unofficial diplomat. He went on to perform before every U.S. president from 1958 until today; the most famous of these concerts occurred in 1987 when he played for Ronald Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev in the White House. This occassion is now remembered as “the day the Cold War was lost.”

Historic video coverage featuring Van Cliburn:

The 2009 Competition

Twenty-nine pianists will compete in the Preliminary Round; twelve will compete in the Semifinal Round; and six will vie for top honors in the Final Round. All six finalists will receive a prize package offering three years of managed concert tours at over $1,000,000 total value.
Cliburn winners perform in hundreds of venues across the United States and abroad.

The 2009 Competitors

Past Top prize winners

Winners of the top prize awarded in the given year (first prize, unless otherwise noted):

2005 — Alexander Kobrin
2001 — Stanislav Ioudenitch and Olga Kern (tied)
1997 — Jon Nakamatsu
1993 — Simone Pedroni
1989 — Alexei Sultanov
1985 — Jose Feghali
1981 — Andre-Michel Schub
1977 — Steven DeGroote
1973 — Vladimir Viardo
1969 — Cristina Ortiz
1966 — Radu Lupu
1962 — Ralph Votapek