Nothing seems to matter when listening to classical music. Notes arrive in the crowded rooms of your head and heart and almost immediately begin shoving the millions of “guests” - to do list tasks, worries, ambitions - out the door.

My dad traveled around the world quite a bit when I was a boy. His return home meant a few things - long football passes in the yard, foreign currency, and CDs. Music CDs. Back in the day, airlines gave out classical music CDs on their international flights. Dad always brought them home and I always listened to them. Actually, the full disclosure is that I DANCED to them (I also played baseball every day so back off!). Bach, Beethoven, and Tchaikovsky were obvious, but I learned about all kinds of composers - Wagner, Brahms, Liszt, Saint-Saens, Holst, Copeland, Schubert, Mendelssohn, Strauss. And then there was a Russian CD one time: Borodin, Mussorgsky, Rimsky-Korsakov, Stravinsky, Prokofiev, Shostakovich, Balakirev, Cui, and Rachmaninoff. As weird as it is, I loved listening to classical music as a boy.

This particular piece is prelude No. 6 from Rachmaninoff’s Opus 23 (which is a set of ten preludes for solo piano). Unfortunately, the video picks up about 1/4 into the actual piece, but I think seeing Van Cliburn play this live, visibly nodding his head in agreement with the music at certain parts, with original audio from more than 50 years ago, at least partially makes up for it.

Seeing Van Cliburn so young back then makes me think about the fleeting nature of youth. Some day - sooner for some, later for others - we’ll die. And when we do, I’m hoping so much that life in the City of God in the New Earth has things comparable to or, even better, far exceeding the beauty of something like this. And that we’ll be able to enjoy them forever without all the bad things in this life. What a gift this instrument known as the piano is to human-kind! Even though I have no idea how to play one, I’m incredibly thankful to those who do!