Moscow Nights: The Van Cliburn Story-How One Man and His Piano Transformed the Cold War (44 page)

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Endgame

IN MOSCOW
the Second International Tchaikovsky Competition got under way in April 1962. Since Van’s victory, Soviet musicians had been furiously racking up awards, winning twenty-seven first prizes and thirty-five second and third prizes at
thirty-nine international competitions. Yet being humiliated at home a second time was an intolerable prospect, and the rigorous selection procedures were quietly scrapped. Instead, “Madame” Furtseva, the all-powerful minister of culture, pulled seven leading pianists into her office and ordered them to take part. Among them was
Vladimir Ashkenazy, who tried to explain that the Tchaikovsky concerto was not good for his small hands; he received short shrift. Ashkenazy had recently married Thorunn Johannsdottir, and the ministry had already warned him that his career would be finished if his foreign wife refused to become a Soviet citizen. Scared of getting more strikes against his name, he gave in, and to the authorities’ considerable relief, he won joint first prize with British pianist John Ogdon, which was enough to save Soviet face. An American, Susan Starr, shared second prize with a Chinese pianist, Yin Chengzong, confirming an unsuspected depth of talent in both countries, but all but one of the remaining prizes went to Soviet competitors.

Van missed the contest. Unlike most musicians, he could not simply drop in on the Soviet Union, play a concert or two, and move on. A Cliburn visit was a national event in which critics pored over his
every note to detect minute changes in style, fans spent their savings to join him at every stop, and journalists sought his views on the state of the world. Even in his absence the Soviet media pestered their
American intermediaries to obtain interviews with him or information about his activities. One Moscow journalist commissioned a contact to procure
Van’s salutation to a conference of Soviet painters and artists; another requested and received greetings
“addressed to his friends, the people in the USSR on the anniversary of the October Revolution.” Russian friends and officials kept in touch with him by phone, and the
FBI logged the conversations. One piano graduate of the Moscow Conservatory
told the Bureau that she was hoping Van might urge Khrushchev to let her mother join her in America. For all his political insouciance, he was aware that everything he did and said concerning the Soviet Union had an impact.
“Some politicians maintain that the world of art and music is a closed isolated world,” he told the Soviet news agency TASS in an interview from New York. “I do not share this opinion. Arts and music play a tremendous part in getting people of various nations closer and in establishing mutual understanding and friendship.”

In the spring of 1962, with relations between the Kremlin and the White House plumbing new depths, Van embarked on a European tour with no plans to visit Moscow. Yet when he reached Finland he found, to his surprise, that the Soviet government was urgently seeking him out.

THAT MAY
, Nikita Khrushchev paced alone around a
park on the Black Sea with several puzzles on his mind. He was still itching to repay the Americans for the U-2 imbroglio, which, by upsetting his planned reforms, had loosened his grip on the party. Since then Turkey, which bordered two Soviet republics, had become host to American Jupiter-class intermediate-range ballistic missiles that could hit Moscow, as could American missiles already in Britain and Italy. Meanwhile, new glitches were plaguing his ICBM program, and though Soviet scientists had tested a new antiballistic missile system,
it was a long way from being operational. Slowly but surely the balance of power seemed to be slipping to the West.

As he walked back and forth to the sea, Khrushchev hit on a possible solution. To deter further attacks on Fidel Castro, help spread revolution across Latin America, and give the Americans a taste of their own medicine, he would secretly install nuclear missiles in Cuba. Perhaps it also crossed his mind that Van had stayed in his Black Sea house, because it was only days later that the Ministry of Culture
tracked Van down in Helsinki and invited him on short notice to a
festival of modern music that was under way in Gorky, some five hundred miles from the Finnish capital.
Rildia Bee, who had come along as Van’s companion and handler, urged him to accept, and he cabled Anastas Mikoyan to make the necessary arrangements.

The Cliburns went directly to the vast Gorky Automobile Plant, home to a Ford assembly line that had been shipped from Detroit in the 1930s and reassembled by Americans fleeing the Great Depression. The venue was the plant’s newly completed Palace of Culture, a monumental complex resplendent with marble columns, stained glass, and crystal chandeliers. Kondrashin was there to conduct the hastily arranged concert, and peeking at the audience from behind the curtain, Van experienced a rare moment of joy.
“I saw the faces of people who understand every movement in a musical phrase, the subtlest tone,” he explained to a journalist from
Moskva
magazine. “I heard that there were many workers in the hall and I wanted to play for them.” None of the faces belonged to Americans: Stalin’s regime had taken away the immigrants’ passports, forced them to become Soviet citizens, and, during the purges, executed most and sent the rest to Siberia. Blissfully unaware of anything beside the music, Van sat in front of the massed ranks of autoworkers and played Prokofiev’s demanding Piano Concerto no. 3.

After two days, he and Rildia Bee
set off for Moscow, also at the government’s invitation. It was late when they checked into the National Hotel, but Van walked over to Red Square and
lost himself on the cobbles among the pigeons. Khrushchev naturally knew of his
arrival and decided to make a fuss over one American he still counted as a friend. So that Van could rehearse undisturbed, the premier offered him use of one of the large new Politburo mansions on
Lenin Hills. The Cliburns had no choice but to accept, but soon afterward Viktor
Sukhodrev received an urgent call from the Ninth Directorate of the KGB, the department responsible for guarding Soviet leaders and sensitive facilities. The secret policeman explained that the visitors were thinking of moving back to their hotel, which could be seen as slighting Khrushchev; since Sukhodrev was friendly with Van, the KGB man asked, could he dissuade them?

Sukhodrev sped over to Lenin Hills and found the Cliburns dining with the composer Aram Khachaturian, who was eating strawberries wrapped in smoked sturgeon. The interpreter joined them and smoothed the way by revealing that Khrushchev had inquired after Van’s health—a sign of favor, Sukhodrev marveled, that was not even accorded to foreign leaders—before making an eloquent plea that the guests should stay put. Van listened attentively and replied that he was very grateful for everything, but his mother had taken to the National and had already got to know the maids and staff. She was sad, and he missed the cozy hotel, too, with its lady admirers who brought him flowers and souvenirs and turned his room into a shrine to its resident deity. Sukhodrev reported his failure to the mansion commandant, and Van and Rildia Bee packed their bags.

It was sentimentally impossible for Van to open anywhere but the Great Hall of the conservatory. Awkwardly, though, his fellow American pianist Byron
Janis was already booked to play there with Kondrashin as part of a State Department–sponsored tour of the Soviet Union. Even more awkwardly, Janis was also a client of Sol Hurok, who happened to be in Moscow at the time. Hurok professed astonishment at Van’s presence, since he was supposed to be concertizing elsewhere, and Janis, who was of Russian ancestry and spoke the language, put in a call to the Ministry of Culture. In a syrupy voice, a Mr. Belotserkovney deeply regretted to inform him that Van Cliburn would be performing in the Great Hall with Kondrashin, that Janis
would be moving to Tchaikovsky Hall, and that it was all a simple misunderstanding.

American reporters scented a story and asked Janis for a quote. “No comment,” he replied sourly. The Stalin-era Tchaikovsky Hall, which was kitty-corner to the Peking Hotel, had famously poor acoustics, and Janis was slated to make a recording with Kondrashin that night. He irritably refused to budge. The last time he had played in Moscow, the U-2 row was raging and he walked onstage to hostile chants of
“Kleeburn! Kleeburn!” This time round, he was finally feeling loved by his ancestors when Van had unexpectedly arrived to spoil things again.

Belotserkovney of the Culture Ministry called Kondrashin, who called the sulking pianist. “Janis, the recordings are in jeopardy. You must play in Tchaikovsky Hall or there will be no recordings,” he said, and hung up. Janis devised a plan. He got Belotserkovney drunk, draped two girls on his knees, and threatened to back out entirely. A compromise was hastily arranged whereby Janis played a recital in Tchaikovsky Hall and moved to the Great Hall for a midnight recording session after Van had vacated it.

Once again Moscow
welcomed Van as its own. After his first concert, on June 13, he sent his mother onstage to play two encores, to tumultuous applause. The next evening, Khrushchev sat beaming in the government box by the stage. At the end, he stood up applauding and gestured to Van to come back to the private reception room. The premier was already on his way when an aide ran after him and reported that Van had announced he was going to play Nikita Sergeyevich’s favorite Chopin piece, the F Minor Fantaisie. Khrushchev reappeared, grinning and clapping. Afterward, Van soothingly told a journalist that he ascribed the plaudits
“not to my humble person but to the American people as a whole, as a sign of respect for my people from the Soviet people and their wish to live in peace and honest cooperation with the United States.” Peoples who respected each other’s culture, he added, would never want to fight. Despite the glow of friendship, Van did have a minor
falling-out with Kondrashin, who
recommended a more academic approach to Brahms and Schumann, going even so far as to suggest that Van return to studying, and discovered that his young friend had a temper after all. Meanwhile, Janis received some compensation for his humiliation when Milan’s Teatro alla Scala called and asked him to take over a concert canceled by Van at five days’ notice. He thought it over and quickly decided the crumbs were too tasty to refuse.

Van had extended his stay to play at Khrushchev’s vast Kremlin Palace of Congresses on June 19, and Khrushchev granted him the rare favor of an invitation to spend Sunday with his family at his
dacha outside Moscow.

Stalin’s villa at Kuntsevo had stayed shuttered since his death, and Khrushchev’s new compound, which the KGB drably named Dacha no. 9, had been rebuilt for him at Usovo, on the Moscow River. Passing between lines of tall birch and pine, the car stopped before a twelve-foot concrete wall with two small guardhouses. Gray iron gates swung open onto a long drive leading to a handsome neoclassical structure of cream stone with a two-story portico, not unlike a scaled-down White House. Surrounding it were rose gardens, fountains, clipped lawns with yellow benches, and a pagoda overlooking the river. A green carpet ran up to the door between potted plants. Inside were forty rooms with old-fashioned furnishings, including a mahogany-paneled living room, a dining room with bright blue draperies, and a cozy billiard room.

It was a warm, sunny day. With Viktor Sukhodrev interpreting, Khrushchev took Van on a tour of his vegetable garden and prized cornfield before leading him down to the river. A public beach packed with local bathers could be seen a hundred yards away, but the dacha had its own beach and a dock where pleasure boats were moored. Khrushchev ushered Van into a rowboat and took the oars, giving Van the tiller.

“We’ve been watching you for two years,” the Soviet premier said, heaving away. “You’re very wise. You don’t engage in politics.”

“If I did,” Van answered, “my grandfather would come back from
the grave and kill me. He told me: ‘Politics is a great art, but it is divisive. Great classical music is for everyone all over the world.’”

Khrushchev grunted agreement. “I’m proud of you because you love classical music,” he said.

When they returned to shore, Van briefly played the piano and the party ate a late lunch under the trees. Khrushchev was keen to fatten Van up:
“Because you are too skinny, Vanya,” he said, grinning expansively. His son, Sergei, who was working on guidance systems for Soviet cruise missiles, whirred away with his cine camera. In summer the Khrushchevs always served
okroshka
, a cold soup made with
kvass
mixed with chopped meat or vegetables. Van asked what it was, sampled it, and requested more details of how it was made. Khrushchev started in on a long explanation of
kvass
(a fermented drink made from dark bread) that baffled his guest, which only made the premier more determined to make Van understand. Van politely pushed the bowl away none the wiser, and for the rest of the meal he studiously ignored the jugs of
kvass
in the middle of the table.