Van Cliburn News

Hear this long-lost recording of Fort Worth's Van Cliburn on classical WRR

Van Cliburn, circa 1962.

Wikimedia Commons

A classical music treasure has been discovered in Dallas: It's a long-lost audio recording of a performance by the late concert pianist Van Cliburn, dating back to 1967.

According to a release, the 55-year-old recording was unearthed at the studios of WRR, the City of Dallas' 101-year-old radio station.

The 35-minute tape is a recording of Cliburn performing Rachmaninoff's Piano Concerto No. 2 with the Dallas Symphony Orchestra at Southern Methodist University’s McFarlin Auditorium in 1967.

This is the only known recording of the concert. It's believed to have aired once on WRR in 1977.

Dallas city archivist John Slate found the recording with assistant city archivist Kristi Nedderman.

"It’s a delight to turn up a gem like this," Slate says in a statement. "For us, it’s like finding an unpublished Gertrude Stein poem."

Written in 1900, Rachmaninoff’s Piano Concerto No 2 is one of the most popular concertos in classical music, but difficult to play and therefore tackled by only the most skillful pianists.

Cliburn performed the concerto many times and was hailed as among the best pianists to ever perform the piece; aficionados say that his execution "holds up virtually over all others before and since."

A hero in Fort Worth and in the DFW classical music community, Cliburn, who passed away in 2013, earned worldwide recognition when he won the first International Tchaikovsky Competition in Moscow in 1958.

The Van Cliburn International Piano Competition, held in Fort Worth, was founded in 1962 and has been held at Bass Performance Hall since 2001. Yunchan Lim, an 18-year-old pianist from South Korea, just won the 2022 Van Cliburn International Piano Competition on June 18.

The unearthed recording was done in mono audio on 7-inch reel-to-reel tape by WRR staff, and is one 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.

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," says WRR General Manager Mike Oakes in a statement. "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."

WRR was recently handed off by the city to KERA to assume management.

The radio station will air the performance — as well as the backstory of the discovery — on Saturday, June 25 at 7 pm on Classical 101.1 WRR.

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Ancient Sculpture News

Fort Worth museum one of only 3 in U.S. to get rare sculpture exhibit

Lorenzo di Masi/Torlonia Collection

The Torlonia Nile

A major exhibition of ancient Roman masterworks is coming to the U.S. for the first time to be viewed at only three museums — including the Kimbell Art Museum in Fort Worth.

Called Myth and Marble: Ancient Roman Sculpture from the Torlonia Collection, it's an assemblage of works stewarded by the Torlonia Family beginning in the early-19th century, and will be installed at the Kimbell from September 14, 2025 – January 25, 2026.

As part of the Foundation’s mission to showcase these historical works to the public, the exhibition will premiere at the Art Institute of Chicago on March 15 through June 29, before traveling to the Kimbell Art Museum in Fort Worth. Its third stop will be at the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, from March 14 - July 19, 2026.

The Torlonia Collection was established during the course of the 19th century by the Franco-Italian banker Prince Giovanni Torlonia and his son Alessandro, then handed down over generations, eventually growing into the largest private collection of ancient Roman sculptures.

Today, the Torlonia Foundation represents the culmination of the Family’s continued passion for art. Created at the behest of Prince Alessandro Torlonia (1925–2017), the Foundation’s mission is to preserve and promote the Torlonia Collection and Villa Albani Torlonia.

In 1876, Prince Alessandro Torlonia (1800-1886) created a museum to house and exhibit the Family’s holdings, which was open to small groups until its closure at the onset of World War II. The sculptures remained unseen by the public from that time until the Foundation’s first exhibition at the Musei Capitolini in Rome in 2020. That was followed by a stint at the Louvre, the first presentation of the collection outside of Rome, where it has drawn more than 600,000 visitors to date, an unprecedented feat.

The exhibit
The curators of Myth & Marble: Ancient Roman Sculpture from the Torlonia Collection are Lisa Ayla Çakmak and Katharine A. Raff of the Art Institute of Chicago. The exhibition is co-organized by the Art Institute of Chicago and the Torlonia Foundation, in collaboration with the Kimbell Art Museum, the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, and The Museum Box. All of the sculptures in the exhibition have been restored by the Foundation with the support of Bvlgari.

The exhibition is accompanied by a catalogue co-published by the Art Institute of Chicago and the Torlonia Foundation, edited by Lisa Ayla Çakmak and Katharine A. Raff, with essays by Silvia Beltrametti and Salvatore Settis.

The North American presentation will feature 58 highlights from the Torlonia Collection, including 24 newly restored works that have not been on view in nearly a century. The sculptures date from approximately the 5th century BCE to the early 4th century CE, with the majority of the works dating to the High Imperial period (1st–2nd centuries CE). Highlights include examples of the most emblematic genres of ancient marble sculpture, acquired by the Torlonia Family from the most prominent collections of Rome’s patrician families, as well as from excavations made on the Family’s own estates throughout Italy.

“The Foundation is excited to be sharing the Torlonia Collection with audiences in North America for the first time. This exceptional group of ancient sculptures is a testament to the enduring cultural legacy of ancient Rome, as well as the vision and passion of multiple generations of the Torlonia Family,” said Alessandro Poma Murialdo, President of the Torlonia Foundation.

The presentation is organized thematically in six sections, featuring sculptures found on the Torlonia Family’s properties in Rome and the surrounding suburbs and their estate in Porto, Portugal, as well as a number of exceptional sarcophagi (stone coffins), among the largest sculpted works in marble to survive from ancient Rome.

The tour reinforces the work of the Foundation to advance the appreciation and understanding of this unparalleled collection and the rich cultural heritage it represents. The Foundation’s mission is carried out through a continuous joint effort between the public and private sectors, including with the cooperation of the Italian Ministry of Culture. The Foundation is supported by a longstanding collaboration with Bvlgari as the principal sponsor of the restoration project since its inception in Rome and throughout the global tour, and Chiomenti, who has lent invaluable support to the Foundation’s core activities.

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