Today, it痴 hard to fathom the worldwide sensation sparked by Van Cliburn痴 victory in the 1958 Tchaikovsky Competition in Moscow. An American pianist winning a prestigious Russian event at the height of the Cold War made headlines everywhere and the two rival superpowers took the young Texan to their hearts, with a tickertape parade in Manhattan and frequent, sold-out tours of the Soviet Union by Cliburn during the following years. VAI has secured the original Russian television tapes of some of those concerts; this first of the series is from the Great Hall of the Moscow Conservatory in 1962, with the excellent Kirill Kondrashin leading the Moscow Philharmonic. The formal program was made up of two of the most popular concertos in the repertory. The Beethoven Emperor Concerto features Cliburn痴 big, bold tone and exquisite phrasing; his magisterial entrance is riveting and the meaningful trills Beethoven sprinkled throughout the work are done with pristine exactitude. The Tchaikovsky Concerto--Cliburn痴 signature piece--is even better; the massive opening chords thrilling, ample poetry in the slow movement and, as in the Beethoven, truly stunning legato playing. Also worthy are the two encores--Chopin痴 Fantasy in F minor, given with a mixture of power and poetry, and Liszt痴 Hungarian Rhapsody No. 12, brimming with excitement and pianistic mastery. Kondrashin痴 orchestral accompaniments in the concertos are exemplary, well-paced and matching Cliburn痴 keyboard approach. The mono sound is barely acceptable, with occasional patches of distortion, and if the grainy picture quality is an indication of Soviet TV quality at the time, they had a long way to go. But this DVD scores on two levels: It痴 an important historical document (Khruschev, Mikoyan and Gromyko are in the audience) and it痴 an important reminder of Cliburn痴 musical prowess at the time. --Dan Davis