In Sunday’s (5/13) Dallas-Fort Worth Star-Telegram, Tim Madigan reports, “On Thursday in New York, Christie’s will auction more than 150 pieces of jewelry, silver, English and Continental furniture, and one particularly noteworthy Steinway grand piano, all of which have been owned by piano legend Van Cliburn. It was the Christie’s auction that Cliburn planned to discuss on a recent afternoon at his mansion [in Texas].… The memories came flooding back. There were pictures of Cliburn with his beloved parents, now deceased. Cliburn with President Ronald Reagan. With opera superstar Renata Tebaldi. A portrait of his hero, Sergei Rachmaninoff. Another photograph of Cliburn in the back of an open limo, waving to the crowds during a ticker-tape parade in 1958 Manhattan. A few weeks before, the lanky young man from Texas stunned the world by traveling to Moscow and winning the Soviet Union’s most prestigious piano competition.… [One] auction item will be the century-old Steinway grand piano over which Cliburn and his mother (also his first teacher), Rildia Bee, long toiled. Proceeds from the sale of the piano will be divided between the Juilliard School in New York and the Moscow Conservatory.”
Posted May 14, 2012
