The Van Cliburn Piano Competition on Your Laptop...

Thanks to an ad on ArtsJournal.com, I found the Van Cliburn Competition live streaming video website. More info:

Welcome to the Cliburn Competition Webcast!

You will soon enjoy watching the entire competition here at www.cliburn.tv. Starting May 22, all performances will be streamed live eleven hours per day, and then archived for “on-demand” viewing.

In the meantime, we invite you to download the Silverlight program today and launch the webcast player to ensure that it functions properly. During this testing period, you will be able to watch two performances from our 2001 Competition archives featuring gold medalists Stanislav Ioudenitch and Olga Kern.

This player will offer extensive functionality with an array of interactive features, including an online audience vote after each round, an “email the competitor” option, and a blog. Online audiences will also have special access to rehearsals between the Takács Quartet and the pianists, the private sessions between the pianists and the conductor, and orchestra rehearsals with the conductor and the six finalists.

Yet another innovative feature will be a commentary at the bottom of the screen, which will offer pointers and alert the viewer what to listen for during each piece.

We encourage you to sign our guest book so you will be notified when we go live on May 22.

To view the concertos from the 2001 competition archive, you must install the Silverlight 2 plugin. Once installed, click the button below that reads "Click here to launch the player". If you install the plugin and this button is still grayed out, refresh this page and then click it to view the concertos.

We look forward to sharing this extraordinary musical event with you via the Internet.