Records: Hot Classic

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In the thirteen years since the plastic LP era began, no classical record has exhibited the sales allure of such old champions as Enrico Caruso's 78-r.p.m. performance of Vesti la giubba from Pagliacci, which sold well over a million copies. But last week Pianist Van Cliburn joined Caruso and a handful of other 78-r.p.m. giants, became the first artist to sell 1,000,000 classical LPs. His recording: Tchaikovsky's Piano Concerto No. 1, which captured first prize for him in the spring of 1958 in Moscow's International Tchaikovsky Competition and which he recorded two weeks later in empty Carnegie Hall, Russia's Kiril Kondrashin conducting.

Arturo Toscanini's LP recording of the Beethoven Ninth Symphony has sold 600,000, but the only real rivals to Cliburn-Tchaikovsky are preserved on old-fashioned shellac. Among the million-selling 78s: Jalousie, performed by Arthur Fiedler and the Boston Pops Orchestra, Pianist Jose Iturbi in Chopin's Polonaise in A-flat and Debussy's Clair de Lune, Leopold Stokowski's recording of Tales from the Vienna Woods.