Scott Cantrell

Fifty years and four months ago, Van Cliburn made international headlines as winner of the first Tchaikovsky International Competition in Moscow. At the height of the Cold War, a gangly 23-year-old Texan triumphed in a contest intended to showcase Soviet pianists. And with his fresh-faced looks and open, engaging manner, he won hearts on both sides of the so-called Iron Curtain. No pianist before or since has been such a media sensation.

FILE/The Associated Press

Van Cliburn's victory at the first Tchaikovsky International Competition in Moscow stunned the world of classical music in 1958.

Now VAI has issued three DVDs from Mr. Cliburn's Moscow performances right after the competition, as well as from return visits in 1962 and 1972. All the performances, in the Great Hall of the Moscow Conservatory, are accompanied by the Moscow Philharmonic Orchestra, conducted with elegant understatement by Kirill Kondrashin.

The prize here is the 1958 Rachmaninoff Third Concerto, surely one of the greatest performances this piece has ever had. Tempos are slower than Rachmaninoff's own, in a landmark 1939-40 recording with Eugene Ormandy and the Philadelphia Orchestra. But the performance never feels slow, and the overall sweep and unaffected eloquence are amazing in a pianist still so young.

Unusually for the time, Mr. Cliburn plays the concerto with no cuts, and with the longer and more virtuosic first-movement cadenza. The way he gathers steam in the cadenza is hair-raising.

The 1972 Second Concerto isn't quite on the same level, but it's very good. Apart from a lugubrious opening tempo, Mr. Cliburn hews pretty closely to the score's metronome markings. But Rachmaninoff's 1929 recording almost consistently takes tempos considerably faster than the markings, a caution to anyone making a fetish of the metronome. Three solo encores are ravishing, even the "Moscow Nights" that Mr. Cliburn plays as lovingly as the Rachmaninoff prelude.

The 1962 Tchaikovsky First is a noble performance, too. The video captures repeated shots of Soviet premier Nikita Khrushchev listening from a box seat, and (in Russian, yet) Mr. Cliburn dedicates a Chopin encore to the Soviet leader.

By the 1970s critics were noting a loss of freshness in Mr. Cliburn's performances. The 1972 Brahms concerto has a wonderfully vital second movement, but otherwise (and in the Grieg concerto, from the same tour) a certain deliberateness settles over too much of the playing. The 1962 Beethoven Emperor is middle-of-the-road, not making much of a mark one way or the other, and not always technically secure.

Black-and-white video and sonics are OK. The Rachmaninoff Third looks and sounds cloudier than the rest, but the performance is so gripping you won't care.

Van Cliburn in Moscow

Cliburn, Moscow Philharmonic, Kondrashin (3 DVDs on VAI label)

BVol. 1: Beethoven: Piano Concerto No. 5, Emperor. Tchaikovsky: Piano Concerto No. 1

C+Vol. 2: Brahms: Piano Concerto No. 2. Grieg: Piano Concerto

AVol. 3: Rachmaninoff: Piano Concertos Nos. 2, 3