Music : Cliburn and Leningrad Orchestra

Van Cliburn attained legendary status with his unprecedented win at the Tchaikovsky Competition in Moscow in 1958. Today, a nearly decade-long hiatus from the concert stage finally behind him, he remains a legend to the public at large.

Saturday night he appeared with the Leningrad Philharmonic Orchestra at the Tilles Center of the Performing Arts on the C. W. Post campus of Long Island University. Even at gala ticket prices ranging from $100 and $500, the event was sold out.

He played Tchaikovsky’s First Piano Concerto, probably the pivotal work in his career--his RCA recording of it was the first classical release to sell more than 1 million copies--and the chosen vehicle for his gala appearance with the Dallas Symphony on opening night of the Meyerson Symphony Center last September.

Cliburn has been surpassingly touchy about performing in New York City, the site of his historic post-Moscow concerto performances. Therefore, this historic meeting of American pianist and Soviet orchestra occurred beyond the bright lights of the metropolis. Yet the lanky Texan hardly seemed relaxed, even with an orchestra that accorded him an enthusiastic ovation at his entrance.

Not surprisingly, given his time away from concertizing, Cliburn no longer sounds like a pianist with a technique in perfect working order. That said, the ability to conjure up an astonishing array of colors and tones from crystalline-yet-sure pianissimos to thundering fortissimos, all without apparent physical effort or strain, remains very much intact. The middle movement Andante semplice was marked by hauntingly beautiful playing and eloquently sustained musical line.

What proved less reliable was his ability to sustain bravura passages with elan and ease. Pages of fireworks were presented almost tenuously, without the bold, affirmative thrust that was once his to command. The downplaying of most of the purely bravura moments did have the laudable effect of blunting the pompous edge this concerto can take on in brasher hands, but it tended to reinforce a certain air of timidity. He also indulged in an arbitrary approach to tempo, even within a run or a phrase, that became disconcerting. Certain key moments, however, particularly the huge double-octave run preceding the final statement of the last movement’s second theme--many a virtuoso’s Waterloo--were managed in super-virtuoso style.

Cliburn’s tempos have slowed somewhat, and this was particularly noticeable following conductor Mariss Jansons’ nervously brisk, no-nonsense Tchaikovsky Fourth Symphony opening the program. When Jansons, currently the Leningrad’s associate conductor, would prod the pace ahead of Cliburn’s in the tuttis, the pianist would pull it back as soon as he could. If Jansons offered no startling insight in either work, he was nevertheless able to keep up with Cliburn’s rhythmic inventiveness, save one conspicuous false entrance near work’s end.

Van Cliburn will probably go on playing the Tchaikovsky concerto to public acclaim as long as he choses to concertize. Recently he presented his first solo-recital program in many a year, in his hometown of Kilgore, Tex. But on the basis of this Leningrad performance, as well as the one heard in Dallas last year, it seems unlikely that he will ever be willing to return to such other concertos as the Rachmaninoff Second or Third, or the Prokofiev Third--music he once excelled in. For keyboard aficionados, a very sad prospect.