(7 of 10)
His Juilliard friends recall him as an easygoing, extraverted Texan of undeniable instinctive talents, but limited intellectual interests. Says a fellow pianist: "He never even talked music or seemed to think about it much when he was away from the piano." Now and again he even let his practicing slide; his mother periodically called him from Kilgore to urge him to practice, or called Manager Arthur Judd of Columbia Artists Management to tell him to get after Van. For a while he was informally engaged to a tall, lissome brunette from back home named Donna Sanders, who was studying voice at Juilliard, but they broke it off after a year when Van decided he was not yet ready to reconcile marriage with a career. Donna, who later won small singing roles on Broadway, where she married an actor, thinks Van did the right thing: "That's the way it should be for someone of his capabilities." (Van's explanation: "I think I have too much affection to give ever to be able to give it all to only one person.")
Break. Cliburn's big break came when he won the Leventritt Award. "We were sitting there," recalls one Leventritt judge, "when in walks this tall, mad-looking fellow, sits down and plays—of all things—Liszt's Twelfth Rhapsody. He bowled us right over. Ordinarily, the judges would not even seriously consider anyone who played a spectacular piece like that. But it was obvious that this was an enormous raw talent; they don't come any bigger." His playing of a far more demanding repertory clinched his victory. When it was announced, he grabbed the daughter of Rosalie Leventritt, the stately dowager who sponsors the contest, and joyously waltzed her around the room before the startled judges. The next day he appeared at Mrs. Leventritt's Park Avenue apartment. "Honey," he said, thrusting a bunch of red roses at her, "Ah'm just a babe at your doorstep."
By the terms of the award, Van made his debut with the New York Philharmonic and four other major orchestras. Raved Louis Biancolli of the New York World-Telegram & Sun: "This is one of the most genuine and refreshing keyboard talents to come out of the West—or anywhere else—in a long time." In his first post-Leventritt season (1955-56) Van played 30 concerts, appeared with such major orchestras as the Cleveland, the Buffalo Philharmonic, the Denver Symphony and the Detroit Symphony.
Then Van fell prey to the rigors of the "concert jungle." The second season after the Leventritt Award he had only two-thirds as many concerts; the next season he played virtually none. There were some personal reasons. First he expected to be inducted into the Army. At the last moment an Army medic discovered that he had persistent nose bleeds and declared him 4-F. Then, last summer, his mother broke a vertebra, and he went back to Texas to coach her piano students for six weeks. By that time it was too late to think of bookings for the winter season.