An introduction to the Van Cliburn Foundation and the 2006 MTNA National Conference Artists.

Personal cultivation begins with poetry, is strengthened by rules of decorum and is perfected by music.

--Confucius 

Music gives a soul to the universe, wings to the mind, [light to the imagination, and life to everything.

--Plato

The Van Cliburn Foundation

From the birth of philosophy in the world's great cultures, music has been recognized as essential in shaping individuals and making them more sensitive, thus nurturing a humane citizenry.

It was with this understanding, as well as the wish to honor Van Cliburn, who embodies in every way the rewards that a life devoted to music-making at the highest levels of artistry can bring, that the Van Cliburn Foundation was created in 1960. Its mission statement reads:

"The Van Cliburn Foundation identifies and promotes the finest talent in classical music worldwide through piano competitions, concerts, and education programs." The Foundation fulfills this mission by conducting the quadrennial Van Cliburn International Piano Competition, widely considered to be the world's preeminent piano competition, and organizing the International Piano Competition for Outstanding Amateurs, the first of its kind in the United States. The Foundation also produces the annual Cliburn Concerts series, which brings world-renowned classical musicians to the Metroplex, as well as the Cliburn at the Modern series, designed to build audiences for new music. Finally, the Foundation offers interactive educational programs to benefit area students in cooperation with the Fort Worth Independent School District.

The Van Cliburn International Piano Competition

The Van Cliburn International Piano Competition is now regarded as the event that offers the most significant opportunities for aspiring musicians to be heard by audiences throughout the United States and abroad. Three stages of competition comprise the rigorous and comprehensive two-and-a-half week event. Following the preliminary round, during which the 30 pianists invited to Fort Worth each perform a recital, 12 semi-finalists collaborate with the Takacs Quartet, in addition to performing a second recital. Six finalists each perform two different concert with the Fort Worth Symphony Orchestra, conducted by James Conlon, and play a third solo recital.

The most significant prizes bestowed by the Foundation are not the cash awards and medals. Instead, the Foundation offers its winners what they seek most: help launching their careers by means of three years of internationally managed concert tours, along with award-winning television documentaries, commercial recordings on the harmonia mundi label and an internationally syndicated 26-part radio series dedicated to the competition and its most memorable performances. By making the competition available in its entirety live on the Internet, streaming both audio and video, the Foundation has extended its outreach to listeners in every corner of the globe.

Stanislav Ioudeniteh: Master of Suspense

Of the hundreds of applications the Van Cliburn International Piano Competition receives seven months before each competition, approximately 140 pianists are selected to be scheduled in 40-minute public concerts in half-a-dozen cities throughout Europe and America. These concerts are attended by an unchanging five-member jury who are asked to select 30 pianists to invite to compete in Fort Worth.

For the 1997 competition, one of the sites was the Giuseppe Verdi Conservatory in Milan. We listened to a number of very fine pianists, several of whom came from the nearby town of Cadenabbia, where an American teacher, William Nabore, hosts a hand-picked number of extraordinary young pianists who are allowed to reside and practice in a beautiful villa on Lake Como, and who attend master classes presented by some of the music world's major luminaries. One cold January day during the Milan screenings, an unforgettable flurry took place back stage. Like a whirlwind, in came Stanislav Ioudenitch, a young man from Tashkent who was a member of the Cadenabbia group. Sparks seemed to fly out of him as he was surrounded by half-a-dozen friends and supporters. He nervously raced to a practice room and, as he sat down at the piano, a woman stood over him blowing hot air from a hair dryer onto his hands trying to keep up with them as they flew across the keyboard. Never having seen anything quite like this, I exclaimed to myself, gritting my teeth, "Oh my!"

As Ioudenitch entered the hall and began to perform, that nervous energy was channeled into a thrilling experience of extraordinary intensity and first-rate musicianship. This same energy accompanied him to Fort Worth where, once again, he brought the attentive listener to the edge of his seat in anticipation of the invention with which the next phrase would be inspired. During the riveting performance in the preliminary round I felt strangely drawn in by and connected with each note, something I have rarely experienced. Deservedly, he earned the jury's unanimous vote to progress to the semi-final round. Then tragedy struck. Half asleep and preparing some tea at 6:00 in the morning, boiling water accidentally spilled all over Ioudenitch's left hand burning him so badly it would have been impossible for him to continue with the competition. Some wealthy local patrons sent him on an all-expense-paid trip to Disneyland to help distract him.

Shortly thereafter, a few members of the jury, believing in his extraordinary talent, sought to keep him in the "hot house" of an American university where he could bring his family, serve as an assistant and continue to practice and grow with the expectation that he would enter the 2001 competition. This he did and, once again, his performances were enthralling. Perhaps one of the highlights of the competition was the Franck Piano Quintet performed with the Takacs Quartet. Very rarely, those of us working in the performing arts are fortunate enough to experience such an uncannily powerful performance that it totally envelops the theater and everyone within it. During the quintet, even people working in the basement could palpably feel that something important was happening on stage and walked upstairs to stand in the wings. It was one of those mesmerizing moments that will remain indelibly etched in the memory of all who were privileged to be there that afternoon. The spontaneity of Ioudenitch's Petrouchka in the semi-final recital gave the impression that it was being created on the spot, as if Ioudenitch were a master chef wondering if he should add a pinch of oregano here or a little pepper there.

A few months after he walked away with the gold medal, Ioudenitch agreed to return to perform in a small fundraiser for the United Way. Once again, I found myself sitting on the edge of my seat as he played one of the most electrifying renditions of a Bach Partita I had ever heard.

Still somewhat impaired by difficulties with the musculature of his back that were the result of a car accident many years ago, Ioudenitch, while working with a trainer to correct his back, has curtailed his performing career somewhat and is concentrating on teaching at Park University. He is given virtually carte blanche in the selection of teachers and students in the music department. As Cliburn often says, "There are no two careers that are the same. Each one is different and distinct." There is no question that the path Ioudenitch has chosen is one that offers him an immense sense of fulfillment, while allowing his truly great musicianship to evolve.

The International Piano Competition for Outstanding Amateurs

The International Piano Competition for Outstanding Amateurs, open to pianists ages 35 and older, and now being replicated in several cities here and overseas, was designed as a complement to the professional competition. As the Cliburn Competition encourages the making of music on stage, the Amateur Competition promotes the making of music at home, as well as a deepened appreciation of the power of music to enrich the lives of so many diverse and accomplished individuals. The competition, which lasts a week and includes 75 pianists, consists of three rounds and offers opportunities to perform chamber music and participate in symposia, roundtables and a number of social gatherings.

The Incredible Michael Hawley

Fifteen years ago, I was invited to attend the Jack Kilby Awards ceremony in Dallas. This award was created by venture capitalist and pianist Victoria Downing to honor the man who invented the integrated circuit (known as the "chip"), which has revolutionized all our lives.

The awardees, selected by a blue ribbon panel of scientists including many Nobel Prize winners, have included some of the most outstanding creative geniuses of our time. It was during that ceremony that I had the privilege of meeting computer scientist Michael Hawley, a tall, youthful, bearded and exuberant young man, who simply sparkled when we spoke of music and the piano in particular.

It was not difficult to discern how serious a musician Hawley was upon learning that he had studied with Ward Davenny, Claude Frank and Earl Wild, among others. When I asked him why he had decided not to become a professional pianist, he simply replied, smiling, "I love music too much."

Several years later, Nela Rubinstein, the wife of Artur Rubinstein and a close family friend, suggested that I visit a competition for amateur pianists in Paris. She had attended it as a jury member and reported that she heard doctors, engineers and housewives, some of whom were so proficient that, as she put it, "Artur would have said 'they belong on stage as much as I do.'" After attending the competition, we decided to initiate a similar venture under the umbrella of the Van Cliburn Foundation. Thus was born the International Piano Competition for Outstanding Amateurs.

One of the first calls I made was to Hawley to inform him of what I thought would be a perfect forum for his talents. He attended our first three competitions, working his way up from earning the award for Most Creative Programming (Busoni, Rachmaninoff and Godowsky transcriptions, Faure, Bolcom, Tatum and the Liszt Sonata) to winning the first prize at the third competition in 2002. He returned for the fourth competition in 2004 as a jury member.

When reading his biography, one is astounded that he can be as accomplished, creative and productive in as many different areas as he is. When the Boston Globe wrote a three-page piece on him, the reporter called to ask me "Is this man for real?" He wanted some assurance that, at least in the world of music, he was truly as remarkable as he seemed to be. As an example, I told him that when Hawley was preparing for the 2002 competition he had decided to create a piano transcription of Symphonic Dances from West Side Story. After having printed out the score on his computer, he set about to learn it on the airplane while flying to Fort Worth. He never had the opportunity to fully play through the piece before he played it in performance for the first time. And even then, he was still wondering whether or not to skip a fugato section!

Hawley's insatiable curiosity has him scouring libraries and the Internet to discover obscure works most professionals have never even heard of. He grabs friends to sight read through Liszt transcriptions and bodies of other four-hand works, which are piled up high on his nine-foot Steinway grand.

I wonder when Hawley finds time to practice. He seems to spend more time in the air on his way to expeditions in places like Bhutan or on Mount Everest than at a keyboard. He stays busy, publishing the world's largest book of photographs (5x7 feet, according to Guinness and Ripley, and goes for $15,000 according to Amazon.com); directing special projects at MIT and the University of Memphis; running marathons; working with Pierre Boulez and IRCAM and George Lucas at Lucasfilm Ltd.; occasionally receiving odd patents and awards; and sitting on a number of corporate boards; not to mention the other lint on his resume: winning a Duncan Yo-Yo competition and joining the Unites States Bobsled team. When I did ask him how he finds time to practice, he replied that he has been tossed out of the lobbies of some of the most prestigious hotels in the world.

And, as if his activities weren't enough to fully occupy the lives of at least three people, he is constantly searching for more opportunities to perform in public. A better example of how music can stimulate the creative mind in all fields of human endeavor would be hard to find.

The Work of the Van Cliburn Foundation

Today, in the 45th year since its inception, the results of the vision first articulated by a small group of passionate citizens in Fort Worth, may be viewed as a series of extraordinary achievements establishing the Van Cliburn Foundation as one of the music world's leading institutions.

An indispensable corollary to the mission of "promoting the finest talent" is the function of building audiences for Cliburn winners and for classical music in general. To this end, the Foundation offers educational outreach programs for school children including Musical Awakenings, which has been brilliantly crafted by early childhood musical education specialist John Feierabend. Musical Awakenings offers a series of interactive programs featuring a highly skilled interlocutor along with a fine pianist, which are presented in the schools to grades three through five. These programs introduce young audiences, often for the first time, to the joy and excitement of classical music repertoire and live performance. Another most successful program, Adopt-a-Competitor, brings a competitor to a number of schools prior to and during each quadrennial Van Cliburn International Piano Competition. The "adopted" competitor performs for and talks with the children who then follow the pianist's progress throughout the competition, and often for years after.

Over the past four decades, the Van Cliburn International Piano Competition has served as a renewable resource for concert presenters on five continents, providing dozens of brilliant young pianists who have gone on to perform thousands of concerts in leading concert halls, as well as in small communities thirsting for live music. Cliburn winners have been featured on innumerable recordings, in televised performances and radio broadcasts. Renowned conservatories and universities have engaged Cliburn winners as artists-in-residence and distinguished teachers, Still others have added the art of conducting to the outpouring of their musical gifts. In short, the collective talent represented by winners of the International Piano Competition continues to enrich immeasurably the culture of communities worldwide.

The opportunity to experience a tremendous wealth of repertoire at hundreds of performances during the Van Cliburn International Piano Competition and the International Piano Competition for Outstanding Amateurs, as well as the privilege of listening to today's most illustrious artists through the Cliburn Concerts series, has helped secure Fort Worth audiences' reputation as one of the most musically knowledgeable anywhere. This sophisticated musical cultivation, in turn, has led to the formation of a large body of deeply dedicated volunteers, without whom the Foundation's activities could never have grown to the current level of prominence. It is the devotion of the public, commitment of our volunteers and generosity of our supporters, all born of a love for great classical music together with a recognition of the fulfillment it brings to all our lives, that has allowed Fort Worth to become a rich musical community.

Richard Rodzinski, president of the Van Cliburn Foundation since 1986, studied musicology and composition at Oberlin College and Columbia University. He became the artistic administrator of the San Francisco Opera in 1969 and of the Metropolitan Opera in 1975.