Van Cliburn International Piano Competition: Composers Invitational under way

Even though the actual finales are not to take place until late Spring of next year, the Thirteenth Van Cliburn International Piano Competition is already well under way. Next to the preliminaries, for which Pianists will playfully compete against each other in Shanghai, Hannover, Lugano, St. Petersburg, New York, and Fort Worth, the organisors have also picked up work related to the American Composers Invitational associated with the event, virtually turning the Van Cliburn Competition into a double bill for performers and composers. While the Composers Invitational will only be held for the third time, the foundation's commitment to contemporary composition is longstanding: Between 1962 and 1997, a total of ten works were commissioned from some of the big names on the American scene – among them Aaron Copland, Samuel Barber, Leonard Bernstein and John Corigliano. Since the 2001 Van Cliburn International Piano Competition, following a suggestion by Corigliano, the organisors decided to give a more competitive edge to the proceedings, inviting a carefully selected group of artists to contribute in order „to seek out a broader range of works from a new generation of composers“.