Van Cliburn

Van Cliburn died.
He made a lot of cheese in his later years.
But so what.

The ’57-’62 recordings he made of Tchaikovsky and Rachmaninoff remain at the top of my favorites.
Van Cliburn made me like Tchaikovsky more and love Rachmaninoff.

Out of dozens of Rachmaninoff recordings I’ve listened to, I only found 2 other pianists I even like as much on that.
Back then, in the years shortly after his wins in Moscow.

I had a beautiful live recording with both composers on the set list.
It was RCA I think, but might have been Deutsche Grammaphon

I hand copied it to tape from a record my uncle had.
He wasn’t much of a music guy, but this piece of vinyl was sweet.

I wore that friggin tape right out over 10+ years.
And never have found that again.