Rildia Bee O'Bryan Cliburn, who gave up her own promising musical career but raised her son to be one of the world's great pianists, died Thursday at age 97. Van Cliburn was at her bedside.
Cliburn, who performed Tuesday night in New York City in his first concert tour in 16 years, hurried home to Texas after he got word that his mother's condition had deteriorated. She suffered a stroke Thursday, forcing Cliburn to skip two weekend concerts, and died Thursday morning at All Saints Episcopal Hospital."Last night after the concert, when he was receiving people, he got a call that she had taken a turn for the worse," said Kevin P. McAnarney, Cliburn's publicist. He chartered a plane and was with her when she died, McAnarney said.
Rildia Cliburn, an accomplished pianist who studied with a student of Franz Liszt, was her son's piano teacher from age 3 until he entered the Juilliard school at 17.
"Van was so teachable, and always so respectful, and so quick to learn," she said in a 1958 interview with Newsweek. "When he was taking his piano lessons, I always told him to consider me as a teacher, not as a mother. You get better results that way."
Her parents forbade her from pursuing a concert career, and she turned to teaching.
Cliburn burst onto the world scene in 1958 by winning the first Tchaikovsky competition in Moscow during the Cold War. He won the competition by playing Tchaikovsky's First Piano Concerto, a piece that became his signature.
It was Rildia Cliburn, whose first name is pronounced rill'-dah, who taught her son the work.
Cliburn stopped performing in 1978.
His current tour started last month in Los Angeles, and nine more performances were scheduled. Plans for those concerts were uncertain Thursday, McAnarney said.
Rildia Cliburn's husband, Harvey Levan Cliburn, died in 1974.