AllMovie

After establishing himself as one of America's leading classical pianists, Van Cliburn set out to help young musicians get the exposure they deserve, and in 1962 the Van Cliburn Foundation in Fort Worth, Texas held the first Cliburn Competition, a contest to find the world's best new classical pianists between the ages of 18 and 30. The competition is held every four years, and filmmaker Peter Rosen offers a look into the workings of the festival in the documentary A Surprise In Texas. The film profiles three of the competition's finalists: Evgeni Bozhanov from Bulgaria, Eduard Kunz from Russia and Nobuyuki Tsujii from Japan. For the finalists more than bragging rights are at stake -- the winners of the Cliburn Competition get cash prizes, recording contracts and international concert tours with three years of management from a leading firm in the classical field. In A Surprise In Texas, we hear these gifted performers as they demonstrate the talent that brought them to Fort Worth, watch them interact with a new and unfamiliar culture, and reveal their working methods, a particularly unusual matter for Tsujii, who has been blind since birth. A Surprise In Texas was an official selection at the 2010 Palm Beach International Film Festival.