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DALLAS - A long-lost audio recording of a 55-year-old performance by the late concert pianist Van Cliburn was unearthed at the studios of WRR, the City of Dallas’ 101-year-old radio station.
The 35-minute tape, now in the Dallas Municipal Archives, is a 1967 recording of Cliburn performing Rachmaninoff's Piano Concerto No. 2 with the Dallas Symphony Orchestra at Southern Methodist University’s McFarlin Auditorium.
This is the only known recording of the concert and is believed to have aired once on WRR in 1977.
Hear the performance - as well as the backstory of the discovery on Saturday, June 25 at 7 p.m. on Classical 101.1 WRR. “It’s a delight to turn up a gem like this,” said City Archivist John Slate, who found the recording with Assistant City Archivist Kristi Nedderman. “For us, it’s like finding an unpublished Gertrude Stein poem.”
Recorded in mono audio on 7-inch reel- to-reel tape by WRR staff, the performance is one part of the many arts-related collections in the Dallas Municipal Archives, which includes records of WRR, the South Dallas Cultural Center, the Office of Arts and Culture, and other City of Dallas institutions.
Long identified with Fort Worth and the DFW Classical music community, Van Cliburn (1934-2013) became a cultural hero with worldwide recognition when he won the first International Tchaikovsky Competition in Moscow in 1958. The quadrennial Van Cliburn International Piano Competition, held in Fort Worth, bears his name.
The digital transfer work to preserve the recording was accomplished by George Blood Audio of Fort Washington, Pennsylvania, funded by the Friends of the Dallas Municipal Archives.
“This is a golden example of the worth and value of archives,” WRR General Manager Mike Oakes said. “It shows that preserving this tape adds to the local history of Van Cliburn and the DFW classical music community and the larger picture of Cliburn the international performer.”
“Preserving audio is a race against time. Every day untold amounts of audio recordings are lost as a result of the fragility and deterioration of recording supports, and the obsolescence of analogue recording and playback equipment,” Slate said. “Safe havens like the Dallas Municipal Archives are here to preserve yesterday’s sounds for future listeners.”
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