Moscow Nights: The Van Cliburn Story-How One Man and His Piano Transformed the Cold War (27 page)

As the news spread, passersby stopped anyone who looked American to congratulate them on their victory. Across the country, people gathered round TV sets and avidly swapped rumors about what kind of political influence had been brought to bear and by whom. The possibility that the public’s wishes had had an effect was almost too much to hope for; the likelihood that the decision had been made purely on artistic merits was not taken seriously.

Back at the hotel, Harriet Wingreen knocked on Van’s door to see if he had survived. No one opened it, so she kept knocking. Eventually Norman Shetler peeked out and said,
“Oh it’s you—come in quick.” Fans had tried to storm the room in their enthusiasm to see and touch Van. Record companies and managers had been calling nonstop, and all the while, Van had been trying to put a call through to Kilgore.

“Have you heard the news?” he asked when he was finally connected. Rildia Bee assured him that they had; first from a friend in Shreveport, where it arrived on the wire service, and then from CBS, whose representative called from New York and offered to patch her and Harvey through to Moscow.

“It’s official,” Van proudly stressed. He reassured her that the Russians were being wonderful and asked if she had told a lady across town who ran the Community Concert Association about his win.
“Honey, she already knows,” Rildia Bee replied, and when he ascertained that a family friend in the next town also knew, he felt he had finally made it. He had to ring off then, because at five he was due at the Kremlin for a diplomatic reception for Queen Elisabeth of Belgium. Ambassador Thompson had offered to take him, but at the last minute Jane Thompson called and apologized, saying her husband had to be out of town.
“But I’ll be taking you to the Kremlin for the reception,” she said brightly, adding that she had just heard Khrushchev was still away, so unfortunately Van wouldn’t get to meet him. Van was excited enough to meet a queen, and Jane sped over in her car. A few minutes later they drove under the Borovitskaya Tower and up into the red citadel whose jumble of palaces, churches, and barracks seemed to breathe the chivalrous and brutal, civilized and archaic, materialistic and spiritual epic of Russian history. It was a curious thing for a Westerner to enter these precincts, though the towers topped with red stars brought back half a memory of Kilgore’s derricks with their Christmas lights.

At the top of the hill, several historic buildings were being razed to make way for Khrushchev’s vast new Palace of Congresses, but
the car headed for the wedding cake yellow and white of the Romanovs’ Great Kremlin Palace. The double eagles had long been ripped off and replaced with hammers and sickles, but the reception halls had lost none of their jaw-dropping extravagance. A host of officials, including Deputy Premier Anastas Mikoyan and new foreign minister Andrei Gromyko were in attendance, but all eyes flowed toward Van, even when Voroshilov, increasingly doddery but still the nominal head of state, entered with the queen. When Van was presented to her, she lavished praise on his performance and invited him to play at the Brussels World’s Fair, which was opening that Thursday.

Suddenly a short, rotund man in a baggy suit waddled out of a side door and caught Jane Thompson’s attention. “Van!” she whispered in surprise,
“Khrushchev is here.” The premier’s tall, blond son, Sergei, and small, dark interpreter Viktor Sukhodrev followed him into the hall. A functionary approached Van. Officially, Comrade Khrushchev was to greet the contestants at a reception the following afternoon, the man explained, but as a most highly esteemed guest, would Van like to meet him now?

Before Van could properly respond, Khrushchev bore down on him, grinning so broadly that he exposed a mouthful of steel, and threw his arms round him. The Soviet leader stood five foot three, and his belly was in the way, so he had to jump a little to kiss Van on one cheek and jump again to kiss him on the other, even though Van subtly bent his knees. Cameras greedily snapped.

Khrushchev righted himself, still grinning.

“Why are you so tall?” he asked, with Sukhodrev translating.

“Because I am from Texas,” Van returned.

“You must have a lot of yeast in Texas,” Khrushchev said with a chuckle, introducing a subject close to his heart. His favorite snack was a double-yeasted dough that he liked best fried as
pirozhki.

“No, just vitamin pills,” Van managed, perhaps thinking of his fast-depleting supplies.

“How old are you?” the premier asked.

“I am twenty-three,” Van replied, with all the dignity his sweet child’s face could muster.

“My son is also twenty-three,” Khrushchev said, pushing Sergei forward.

“What month was he born?” Van asked.

“I must ask his mother about that,” the Soviet leader said, grinning. Sergei was his favorite, but he had never been the most doting of fathers.

“Was it July?” Van suggested.

“Probably July,” Khrushchev agreed. He neglected to add that Sergei was a rocket scientist engaged in building missiles that were designed to pulverize Western cities.

The situation was unreal; politics aside, one only had to imagine the likelihood of an incumbent American president dropping by after a music competition and going out of his way to engage the winner in banter. It was about to get stranger.

“I was listening to you in the second round on the radio in Hungary,” Khrushchev said. “I loved the way you played the F minor Fantasy opus 49 of Chopin.”

Van was stunned into silence. He looked at the warty, gap-toothed premier, suspecting he was being tricked. He turned to the smooth Sukhodrev, wondering if the interpreter had made it up. But Sukhodrev was only two years older than Van, and it seemed unlikely that he knew such an obscure piece, either.

“What did he say?” Van asked.

“He said he was so thrilled that in the second round you played the F Minor Fantasy by Chopin,” Sukhodrev repeated.

No American musician thought of being part of the mainstream of national life. Yet here was a superpower leader, treating Van as an equal and speaking appreciatively of a piece as delicate and refined as the Chopin F Minor Fantaisie. Van began feeling he was in a musical paradise.

The reception over, the entire party moved on to the conservatory for the formal award ceremony. Onstage, the competition officials
were ranged behind a long table.
Shostakovich opened the session. Reformers were convinced the composer was a secret dissident, his music a subversive commentary on the sins of Soviet society, but as usual he made a safe speech, praising the talented artists who, he said, held aloft the banner of true art, and declaring that the competition would take its place in the history of music. Nervous, fidgety, and tetchy, he chewed his nails and fingers, twitched his chin, wrinkled his nose to push up the thick glasses that veiled his eyes, stuttered as he spoke through tight lips, and with an expression on his pallid face unfathomably balanced between courage and doubt, irritation and moroseness, betrayed no hint of what he was thinking. Van had no idea of Shostakovich’s past troubles and merely thought the composer was very kind, interesting, and nice.

Dmitri Kabalevsky handed out the prizes, to a ringing ovation. Minister of Culture Mikhailov took the podium to declare Moscow the world capital of music and announced that the Tchaikovsky Competition would henceforth be held every four years. Efrem Zimbalist was dragged on to make a short speech, presumably to quash rumors of his rebellion. Valery Klimov, the winning violinist, thanked the government and the Communist Party, on behalf of the Soviet participants, for their unswerving commitment to the training of young talent. Finally, Van tried out a few lines in Russian. “Dear friends,” he said, “I’m very grateful to the audience for inspiring me. Thank you very much.” Everyone laughed and cheered. He felt thrilled of course, as if he had been rewarded for twenty years’ hard labor, given a passport to explore new places and meet wonderful people. Yet, at the same time, he felt strangely
guilty and discomposed. He had heard and so admired the beautiful performances by some of the other participants, including the three Soviet winners. It was so much easier to praise others than to bear the responsibility of winning. As Mother always said, when it came down to it, the stage was a lonely place.

Besides, the Soviets were his friends now. Even Iron Lev had turned out to be all warmth and enthusiasm. When he approached Van, his face lit up with childlike candor, and his booming voice and
infectious laugh made it impossible not to like him. Lev had brought along Ella and their young daughters, Irina and Natasha, and during the prize giving, Irina clambered onstage. She was ordered down and started crying, so Lev gave her his silver medal to play with and Van took her on his knee.

After the presentation the top winners of the violin and piano competitions performed, the latter clearly at a higher level than the former, with Kondrashin again conducting the Moscow State Symphony. Van was last, with the first movement of the Tchaikovsky. For the first time, Liu Shikun listened properly, his heroic months of rehearsal finally over, and he was stunned. He had never heard anyone play the piano as if he were making it up, freely ignoring the markings and sending opposites—dark and light, fast and slow, strong and gentle—into spiraling collisions. He vowed that from then on he would liberate his own style. Soviet pianists, among them young Sergei Dorensky, also fell under Van’s spell, realizing that Russian music could be more melodic and dramatic than the Soviet school, with its intense focus on virtuosity, allowed. Not all praised Van unreservedly. There was a
drop of bad taste in his unabashed Romanticism, sniffed Heinrich Neuhaus, even though he had voted for him and publicly
called him a genius. Lev Vlassenko privately agreed, though he, too, had much to think about.
“The competition has demonstrated that one should not be afraid to sincerely express the feeling which is dormant in one’s soul,” he reflected to a journalist. “Sometimes I feel too embarrassed to show it.” The musical unbuttoning echoed what millions of ordinary Russians already felt.

At the end, cheers rang out and Van played one encore after another. Khrushchev and the leaders left, but the audience shouted, “More! More!” in English. Van’s bandaged finger was now blistered from overuse, and he raised his hands. “Bol’shoye spasibo,” he called out: “Many thanks.” No one moved, and his fans were still shouting as the house lights were extinguished. Numerous young women were lying in wait outside the main entrance, so officials shepherded him t
hrough a back door.

On the way out, a Western diplomat turned to an American guest:
“Now you really have a sputnik,” he said. In that combustible atmosphere it did not seem far-fetched to liken piano playing to the first space launch: Moscow Radio itself had dubbed Van “the
American Sputnik, developed in secret.” Within hours, as images of Van and Khrushchev in a mutually admiring grip flooded the world’s front pages, it seemed even more apt. The effect was electric. In a flash, the unfathomable leader of world communism stood revealed as an approachable human being.

THERE WAS
no time for rest. An hour after the hall was emptied, Van was back onstage for another nocturnal filming session, this one lasting till 3:30 a.m. The next day, Tuesday, came Ambassador Thompson’s lunch in honor of the American contestants. Then Van was back at the Great Kremlin Palace for the Ministry of Culture’s reception. It was held, with full pomp, in the vanishingly vast St. George’s Hall, the Kremlin’s grandest. Van stepped onto a sea of intricate parquet and saw Khrushchev heading for him with outstretched arms. The premier proudly presented his son, daughter, and granddaughter, and then caught sight of Lev Vlassenko.

“Why did you let the American chap take first prize?” he demanded of Vlassenko, the levity underscored with a whisper of menace.

“Look at me, and look at Van,” Vlassenko joked, pointing up at his rival.

Khrushchev spotted Liu Shikun, who was nearly as tall as Van, and leaped up trying to pat the top of his head.

“Great man!” he said. “You and Van Cliburn are the most talented pianists at this event. But of course Van Cliburn is the number one talent and you are the number two talent.” Liu murmured in agreement and chose not to notice Khrushchev’s rudeness to Vlassenko.

“I’m very, very pleased that you have made your Chinese people proud,” Khrushchev continued, perhaps hoping the honor might help paper over the widening Sino-Soviet split: “It’s a big surprise for the Soviet audience that China has such a talented pianist.” Liu expressed
his thanks for the encouragement and promised he would strive for a higher artistic outcome.

“After a few years why not have another competition between you two and see who’s the winner and who’s the runner-up?” Khrushchev added, grinning.

“For now I think Van is better than me,” Liu modestly replied. “I definitely learned a lot from him.” The Chinese ambassador stepped in and thanked the premier for his inspiring words. The two countries talked so little these days that Soviet citizens had
eagerly questioned Liu about daily life in China.