Music Review : Van Cliburn Disconcerted : Pianist Aborts Erratic Program Midway Through

The Van Cliburn concert at Hollywood Bowl on Monday was supposed to be special. And it was, ultimately for the wrong reason.

It ended up being half a concert.

After an apparently uneventful San Diego tryout, the world’s most celebrated keyboard dropout was beginning his long-anticipated comeback tour. It would be his first extended tour since 1978.

The marathon agenda should have included two--count ‘em, two--signature showpieces, both arduous, not to mention Copland’s “Lincoln Portrait” with the sometimes overachieving Cliburn working as narrator. The all-American superhero would even perform his own transcription of the “Star-Spangled Banner” as patriotic foreplay.

The festivities were designed to recall the eternally boyish virtuoso’s breakthrough success in the Soviet Union 36 years ago. A conductor and accompanying orchestra were brought in all the way from Moscow, for sentimental reasons.

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The local concert would commemorate Cliburn’s imminent 60th birthday (Tuesday). Not coincidentally, it would also kick off the classical-music portion of official World Cup brouhaha in Los Angeles, which ends on Saturday with the three-tenor circus at Dodger Stadium.

Although the first half of the program did not turn out to be an artistic triumph, it did proceed without hitch. Then came the hitches, beginning with an intermission that almost refused to end. The natives became restless, and resorted to rhythmic clapping to prove it.

The audience--tabulated, generously perhaps, at 14,035--knew something was wrong at 10:25 when the anonymous but ominous voice of our resident orchestral guru, Ernest Fleischmann, announced that Cliburn was “feeling slightly indisposed.” The crowd groaned en masse.

“We’ll let you know in a few minutes what happens,” Fleischmann added.

Soon a tuxedoed gentleman appeared with an armful of scores, which he began to distribute to the obviously bemused instrumentalists. He retreated backstage, however, before completing his task. The orchestra, we later learned, was prepared to play Tchaikovsky’s Fifth Symphony in place of Rachmaninoff’s Third Piano Concerto in case of emergency.

Fleischmann eventually returned to the PA system, asking for the audience’s continued patience. Finally a stagehand set up a microphone near the piano, and, at 10:32, Cliburn reappeared.

He felt “light-headed,” he apologized. He had endured “a dizzy spell.” A doctor--his own, we discovered--had taken his blood pressure. In place of the big concerto with orchestra, he would just play “a couple of encores--solo.”

And so it went, sadly. Cliburn aborted the scheduled marathon and reduced the second, potentially climactic, half of his comeback concert to four relatively easy pieces (which he didn’t deem worth identifying). The potentially grandiose gesture gave way to a few intimate flourishes.

Finally, at 10:53, the protagonist thanked the reasonably indulgent audience, and, as he said good night, voiced a benediction: “I can’t tell you how much you have inspired and thrilled me.”

Then he was ambushed onstage by a couple of guys in Texas mufti: singer Johnny Mathis and pop-record producer David Foster. They bore a monstrous birthday card in the shape of a piano. It was signed, they proclaimed, by Ron Reagan and Neil Simon, among others. Foster manned the piano while Mathis placed his cowboy hat on Cliburn’s head and led the throng in a slightly premature chorus of “Happy Birthday.”

A spokesman for Cliburn explained that Mathis and Foster are personal friends of the pianist. The spokesman didn’t know whether the well-wishing Reagan was senior or junior.

It was one of those nights. The word, I think, is bizarre.

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What’s that? You want to know about the music-making?

Oh dear.

Cliburn’s version of the national anthem whispered like a lullaby in the wide open spaces. The crowd sang along in a reverential hush.

Vassily Sinaisky and the Moscow Philharmonic countered with what must be the anthem of the new Russia. “ ‘God Save the Czar’?” quipped an irreverent revisionist out front. The performance, in any case, turned out to be the most impassioned orchestral effort of the evening.

The Muscovites seemed a bit confused by the stark Americana of Copland’s “Lincoln Portrait,” striving for plush emotion where the composer wanted bleak restraint. Cliburn read the text with dignity.

The Piano Concerto No. 1 in B-flat, a.k.a. Tchaikovsky’s Greatest Hit, did not go very well. Cliburn’s playing was erratic--a strange compendium of compelling insights and smudged evasions. His fabled technique seemed prodigious one moment, unreliable the next. The rhetoric moved in odd spurts, the expressive impulses vacillating between the urgent and the dutiful.

Cliburn was most persuasive in the simple lyricism of the Andantino. Unfortunately, a large portion of the audience didn’t stick around to hear it. Many of the fans apparently thought the concerto ended with the first movement.

It is impossible to know whether Cliburn fell victim to comeback nerves, whether the long sabbatical in his checkered career has taken its toll, or whether he was ill. It is possible to speculate, in any case, that he was disconcerted, quite literally, by the rough and seemingly unready, strident and scrambly accompaniment provided by Sinaisky and what now passes for the Moscow Philharmonic.

The so-called encores that comprised the impromptu portion of the event found a more relaxed Cliburn playing with greater finesse, at least some of the time. The hemidemisemirecital included a portentous Szymanowski Etude and a lovely performance of Liszt’s transcription of Schumann’s “Widmung” followed by rather ponderous approximations of Debussy’s “La terrasse des audiences du clair de lune” and Chopin’s Scherzo in C-sharp minor.

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Incidental intelligence:

* The amplification system at the Bowl, newly renovated, introduced some grotesque distortions of its own. From the rear section of the lower boxes, the piano sounded like a bleary calliope submerged in blurry molasses. The orchestra sounded tinny and tubby beyond nature.

* The skimpy program booklet provided no annotations on the music. It didn’t even identify the key signature of the missing Rachmaninoff concerto.

* Fancy lighting effects transformed two of Frank Gehry’s acoustical orbs into soccer balls.

* The top ticket cost $250.

* PIANIST ‘FEELING WELL’

Van Cliburn will continue his 16-city U.S. tour. F6