Van Cliburn

You don't have to do this forever.

You don't go to a piano concert and see Van Cliburn putting a hand towel over his hand so that he's not gonna look at his, um, fingers while they play the piano keys.

No, you're not gonna need this forever.

There is a story that, um, Mozart and his older sister, they were both very talented musicians, and their dad took them on tours.

Wow.

And, um, I remember Van Cliburn, the very famous pianist, was there, and also Johnny Mathis, the famous singer.

And David is a very, very outgoing, he loves playing in front of people.

[laughs]

We played Tell Him.

Okay.

And, um- And then all of a sudden, Van Cliburn sits at the piano with me-

Yeah

Here, it's a Schubert fantasy in front of a sold-out crowd at Carnegie Hall.

One's tempted to say he's one part Glenn Gould, one part Van Cliburn.

But the truth is, he's Lang Lang.

He and his signature bouffant were the obvious choice to open the Beijing Olympics, watched by four billion people, and for President Obama to invite to play at the intimate White House dinner for the president of China.

The prize winner.

And I said, "Oh." I said, "Is that not the same?" I said, "What, what, what's the difference?" I said, "If I don't win a prize, how I'm gonna become a great musician?" And he said, "Oh, okay, that's the, the wrong understanding you have." And especially his wife, you know, uh, Naomi.

Every time I go to library i- uh, in, uh, in Curtis, and then, uh, I start, you know, looking over the competition forms, like v- Van Cliburn, Chopin, Tchaikovsky, and I take it out.

And then I'm thinking to, to fill the form, right? And I saw Naomi next to me, "Hey, what are you doing, bad boy?"

[laughs] And, uh, I remember when I was really young, my parents gave me a, um, 'cause I'm gonna date myself, but it's a big deal to have CDs back when I was a kid.

So my parents got me a, um, a CD player, and my first CDs were the Van Cliburn, 'cause I was playing piano pretty heavily at that time and loved it.

Uh, uh, Van Cliburn Tchaikovsky Competition, so it was him playing Chaik 1 and Rach 2.

And hello, I mean, [laughs] the horn parts in that are pretty...

They're pretty attention getting, you know? Um, and then Mad About Beethoven.

It's wild.

Except that you can become a beautiful musician, even a virtuoso or even like a Clyde Van Cliburn.

You know, do you know Van Cliburn? He won some contest when he was really young or whatever like that.

But he wound up having a

miserable existence.

I hear a lot of people say to me, oh, you're so talented.

And I always refer them to Van Clyburn, one of the greatest pianists of all time.

He said, well, you talk talent.

He said, if you mean practicing seven hours a day, six days a week, then I meet up with talent.

I think throughout the world, the two instruments that are the shall we say, the most highly prized instruments because composers wrote the most music for them are the violin and the piano.

And in America, we already had a piano competition called the Van Cliburn Competition.

Van Cliburn was an extraordinary pianist who himself won the Tchaikovsky Competition in Moscow.

came back to America, had a New York ticker tape parade.

That's never been, never anything like that has ever happened since then probably for a classical musician.

Tawny Town Winery will have 44 proof from 7 until 10 tomorrow night.

And the Van Cliburn Concert.

At Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, we'll feast Janice Carissa.

That music will start at 7.

But I will tell you, I checked a few hours ago, there were four tickets left.

So I make no promises, but you can check that out.

The Van Cliburn concert tomorrow night, Janice Carissa, beginning at 7, Crystal Bridges.

Saturday, Billy Idol is with Grocery Bag at the Walmart app.