Van's Big Year

Surrounded by personal representatives, pressagents and recording executives, Harvey Lavan Cliburn Jr. strode into the mahogany-stained elegance of Manhattan's Steinway Hall one day last week to chat about his improbably skyrocketing career. During the fall and winter season, he said, he would play roughly 55 concerts with orchestras across the country. He would also throw his rehearsals open to teenagers. He drew a check for $1,250 from his pocket (part of his $6,250 Moscow prize money) and presented it to the city of New York to be used to start other young artists on their way.

Before his Moscow triumph, Cliburn was getting fees of $500 to $750 per concert; now he asks $3,500, has made as much as $15,000 for a pair of concerts (in the Hollywood Bowl). This year Van stands to make $125,000 from concerts. TV appearances and recordings. His RCA Victor recording of Tchaikovsky's Piano Concerto No. 1, since its appearance in midsummer, has consistently hovered at or near the top of the LP sales charts alongside Johnny Mathis and South Pacific; by year's end it may well sell close to 1,000,000 copies, not too far behind the alltime LP bestseller. Elvis Presley's Elvis (1,500,000 copies).

Often criticized for limiting his repertory. Van has been polishing three new concertos: Mozart's C Major (K. 503), Prokofiev's No. 3 and Schumann's A Minor. He originally planned to play the Mozart and Prokofiev with the New York Philharmonic later this month, but last week he changed his mind, announced he would ride with a surefire moneymaker, Rachmaninoff's Piano Concerto No. 3.

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