It's almost hard to imagine now, in an era when the Soviet Union is no more and the airwaves are dominated by hip-hop.

But in 1958, when the gifted, gangly young Texas pianist Van Cliburn returned home from Moscow with a gold medal from the Tchaikovsky International Piano Competition, he was met with a huge ticker-tape parade in New York City. Photos of Cliburn shaking hands with Nikita Khrushchev were in every major American newspaper, and Time magazine put Cliburn on its cover as "The Pianist Who Conquered Russia."

Only months after the launch of Sputnik, in one of the chilliest periods of the Cold War, Cliburn's victory in Russia took on a symbolic power far surpassing its purely musical merits.

For more than a decade, Cliburn's signature piece — the Tchaikovsky Piano Concerto No. 1, with which he won the competition — was the best-selling classical album in the world, selling more than 3 million copies worldwide.

We'll hear Cliburn, now 71, play that signature piece once more, when he takes the stage in Seattle tomorrow night, officially launching the symphony's concert season at its annual Opening Night Gala. Cliburn is the star of an all-Russian program, led by music director Gerard Schwarz, in an evening that also offers an opportunity for music lovers to party in honor of the orchestra's 102nd season.

Classical-music preview

Seattle Symphony Opening Night Gala, with Gerard Schwarz conducting and piano soloist Van Cliburn, 7 p.m. tomorrow, Benaroya Hall, 200 University St., Seattle; $35-$95 for concert, varying prices and times for gala packages (concert tickets, 206-215-4747; gala/party tickets, 206-215-4834).

Ticket buyers have the option of buying just concert tickets, or additional gala packages that offer a 5:30 p.m. black-tie pre-concert reception, and a post-concert dinner/dance. The program opens with the colorful "Kamarinskaya" Fantasy of Glinka, followed by the concerto, Borodin's well-known "Polovtsian Dances" (from "Prince Igor"; one of the dances was immortalized as the song "Stranger in Paradise"), and finally Tchaikovsky's "1812" Overture. That last work also features the participation of the University of Washington Husky Marching Band.

It's hard to overstate how much of a household name Cliburn became as a result of that Tchaikovsky Competition victory. For years afterward, even now, his name recognition trumps that of nearly any other living pianist.

Cliburn's period of greatest post-competition success lasted about two decades, during which (in 1962) he founded the Van Cliburn International Piano Competition, held every four years in Fort Worth, Texas. This competition has proved a remarkable answer to his own big win in Moscow, launching in turn the careers of dozens of young pianists — several of them Russians, by the way.

Around the end of the 1970s, however, Cliburn began a lengthy hiatus, turning away from public performance. Some concluded his decision to leave the stage was due to the death of his father; others thought Cliburn was simply burned out. Cliburn was reticent about his hiatus, but he always promised he would return. He did periodically step back into the limelight, for a 1987 White House performance before President Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev, and later for the 100th anniversary of Carnegie Hall. Subsequent concert performances upon his 1989 return to the concert stage got mixed reviews: the critical consensus has been that Cliburn's post-hiatus performances are not the equal of his earlier artistic level.

But he remains a popular favorite and an important historical figure, one of few artists to be awarded both the Presidential Medal of Freedom and the Russian Friendship Medal. He has performed for every president since Harry Truman.

Born Harvey Lavan Cliburn on July 12, 1934, the pianist entered the Juilliard School of Music at 17, and by age 20 was already a Leventritt Award winner and a Carnegie Hall debutant. He was only 23 when he won the Tchaikovsky Competition. He always said the most important artistic figure in his life was his mother, piano teacher Rildia Bee O'Bryan, who began teaching him when he was 3, and who invariably sat backstage at every concert until her death in 1994 (at 97).

Cliburn's biggest asset through the years has been the sonority he draws from the piano. It's a sound once described by the late noted critic and piano expert Harold C. Schonberg as "the most sensuous of sounds ... rich, never percussive, a real piano sound that reminded old-timers of the great romantic pianists of the past."

Maybe we'll hear that sound again in Seattle tomorrow night. Cliburn himself has said: "An artist can be truly evaluated only after he is dead. At the very eleventh hour, he might do something that will eclipse everything else."

Melinda Bargreen: mbargreen@seattletimes.com