Moscow Nights

by Nigel Cliff

  Across the Soviet Union millions had gathered in front of television sets to watch the broadcast. Van was the first American most had seen live, and they were taken aback. In Leningrad, two piano-mad schoolgirls named Elena and Natasha were mesmerized by his ardent, soulful performance and the way his whole body seemed fused to the music. In Egorievsk, in the Moscow region, tenth-grade student Tanya Kryukova watched shaken and sobbing. She cried through the break in the performance and, afterward, sat down and wrote to Van, “Oh if only I had been in that hall that evening! If only I could get close to the stage, close to you, and join the mad applause to you, to your talent. Of course you wouldn’t even have noticed the seventeen-year-old girl, mad with happiness and admiration, but I could have kissed and kissed your hands, the wonderful hands of the wonderful musician . . . My dear, dear Van Cliburn, I cannot describe my admiration for you. I have no words to prove that I am in love with you as a pianist and a musician.” A maid at a Moscow institution was equally transfixed. “You know,” she tremulously told a friend, “I always turn off the TV or switch channels when they start playing this kind of music, an orchestra or something. But this time there was a young lad playing, really just a boy, and I was sitting there in tears. I don’t know what happened to me, I never listened to this kind of music, but I couldn’t tear myself away. I could have sat there forever.” Van’s tender Romanticism had unlocked feelings pent up for decades by the programmed pragmatism of Soviet life, and barely knowing why, countless Russian hearts reached out to him. That night, a young American less than a month into his first overseas trip was the most beloved individual in the Soviet Union.

  No one, least of all the psychological operation experts, could have foreseen it, because it could have been no one else. Out of a bleak world of enmity and despair had come a tall, blond, blue-eyed Texan who loved Russia and its music with humble reverence. He had old-fashioned courtliness, a touchingly eager manner, and a spectacular way with the piano that transported them to a half-remembered past. Music that depicted the many cruelties and brutalities of that past was not for him: the Russia he summoned up with his hands was a place of magnificence, beauty, and romance. How could anyone not have fallen for him?

  He had one more quality, which more than anything else transformed the Soviet people’s image of Americans: innocence. “He’s a fourteen year old boy psychologically,” Sviatoslav Richter gloated to Heinrich Neuhaus, who was starting to say the same thing but was relieved his friend said it first. It was meant, mostly, as a compliment: an intuition that Van possessed the forthright sincerity and originality common to great artists—the instinctive approach to music that Anton Rubinstein summed up as following “whatever your soul tells you.” At this heady moment, with all Russia turned on its ear, it really seemed it could take something that simple to change the world.

  • 9 •

  “We Are in Orbit”

  MAX FRANKEL had been stationed in Moscow for only a few months, but it was long enough for him to have grown frustrated with his lot. Like every newcomer, he had learned to read Pravda back to front, starting with the bottom of the last column, where the real news (about changes in the leadership) was buried. Most foreign hacks filled their quotas by moistening those crumbs and serving them up alongside gobbets of propaganda about harvests improving and industrial quotas exceeded, larded with the maximum skepticism they could muster and the censors would swallow. By diligent digging, Frankel had done better, landing a few carefully padded punches at bureaucratic absurdities, such as freight quotas reckoned by railcars not contents, which incentivized workers to trundle empty trains around Siberia; or shoe factories whose productivity was measured by the quantity of leather they consumed, which yielded footwear fit only for Frankenstein’s monster. What he really wanted to know was what the Soviet people privately thought of the system they devoted their lives to gaming. Yet Western reporters were closely corralled in foreign ghettos, and it was almost impossible to meet any ordinary Soviets. So limited were his contacts that he counted Nikita Khrushchev as his best Russian friend.

  The young karespondent had developed a sneaking fondness for the potbellied premier and his pugnacious banter, and though Frankel heartily despised the Soviet government, he also harbored grand dreams of saving the planet by helping the two superpowers overcome their mutual ignorance and fear. The moment he saw the pandemonium at the conservatory, he knew it was the story he had been waiting for. In the safety of a concert hall, Russians had forgotten their fear of authority and had showered an all-American boy with love. Now the burning question was whether the leadership would let them have their way, or strike out the truth with the stroke of a party secretary’s pen.

  Frankel darted off to the foreign annex of the Central Telegraph on Gorky Street, where he did daily battle with the Glavlit censors concealed behind a curtained glass door. “A boyish-looking, curly-haired young man from Kilgore, Tex., took musical Moscow by storm tonight,” he typed:

  He dazzled the audience with a display of technical skill that Russians have long considered their special forte. He added to it a majestic romantic style that his 1,500 listeners could not resist.

  Mr. Cliburn had emerged from the first two rounds of the competition as the rage of the town. Nothing has been so scarce here in a long time as a ticket to his performance . . .

  It is far from certain that Mr. Cliburn will win first prize in the competition. The nine finalists are all first rate and include another American, Daniel Pollack of Los Angeles. But Mr. Cliburn is clearly the popular favorite and all Moscow is wondering whether an American will walk off with top prize.

  To drive home the extent of the furor, he added that the competition had gripped Moscow the same way the World Series captivated Americans.

  The journalist handed the long article to a sleepy woman, who disappeared behind the door. For once it passed the censors intact. To Frankel’s equal surprise, his New York editors grasped its significance. The story made the morning’s front page, along with a publicity photograph of Van at the keyboard in his stringy bow tie. Such was the news value of the Cold War: less than four years earlier the Times had marked Van’s Leventritt victory with a brief notice on page twelve. Yet not even Frankel suspected just how closely the competition was being followed at the highest levels of the Soviet government.

  ONCE AGAIN Khrushchev’s strategy of opening up to the world had had unforeseen consequences, and his bureaucrats found themselves in a bind. On the one hand, the mass adulation of the American pianist was so fanatical that it amounted to a provocative political statement; to sanction his victory was not just to admit defeat in a musical contest, but also to acknowledge a popular hunger for freedom. On the other hand, snubbing him risked ruining the reputation of the brand-new competition, exposing it as a propaganda exercise and squandering the international respect it had been designed to reap. Yet Marxist-Leninist ideology taught that it was impossible for a bourgeois to outperform a Communist; to diehards, any suggestion to the contrary was counterrevolutionary. The officials began to quarrel over what to do.

  The day after Van’s triumph every member of the Central Committee received a long dispatch marked “URGENT—SECRET” from Deputy Culture Minister Kaftanov. It recounted Van’s success, the standing ovation from all members of the jury “contrary to the provisions of the competition,” and the audience chant of “First prize, first prize!” The foreign jurors, Kaftanov reported, had asked that a request be sent to the government to establish a special “Big Prize” for Van Cliburn. “The rules of the Competition do not envisage such a prize,” he noted. “There is a great frenzy around Cliburn’s performance, an erroneous attitude among a certain part of the musical public, there are discussions of the allegedly possible non-objective evaluation of his work . . .” Nevertheless, he added, the Soviet comrades on the jury believed that Cliburn’s talent “deserves very high praise and that awarding the first prize to him would be very fair”:

  Moreover, Comrades
Kabalevsky and Gilels think that even sharing two first prizes between Van Cliburn and Vlassenko would be unfair. If this is the case, the voting could result in some very serious complications. The foreign members of the jury could, while trying to secure the first prize for Cliburn, unjustly and artificially mark down the marks for other Soviet musicians.

  The Ministry of Culture thinks, in connection with the above, that the first prize should be awarded to Van Cliburn. It seems to us that the forthcoming performance by Soviet musicians L. Vlassenko and N. Shtarkman in the third stage will not cause any important changes to the situation.

  A decision to award the first prize to Van Cliburn can in no way diminish the authority of the Soviet school of piano as all the first prizes at the violin competition were awarded to Soviet violinists. The second prize at the piano competition can be awarded to the Soviet pianist Lev Vlassenko.

  Such a decision can be received with approval by the broad circles of the musical public and raise even higher the authority of the Tchaikovsky competition.

  Please give us instructions.

  Whether or not Gilels and Kabalevsky really believed that the foreign judges would revolt at the prospect of splitting the prize, they had decided to stand up for the young American. Consequently, the Culture Ministry, having pressured Lev Vlassenko to take part, and having selected him as the winner of the competition, demoted him to second place before he had even played.

  LEV AND Ella had stayed overnight with relatives in Moscow, and as in every household, the radio was tuned to the broadcasts from the conservatory. When Van started on the Rachmaninoff, Lev had stopped to listen. “That’s good playing,” he said, and he followed it to the end. The third movement convinced him less than the first two, but the ever-protective Ella was sorry he had heard it.

  His chance came the next evening, between Naum Shtarkman, who clenched up and played listlessly, and Toyoaki Matsuura. Vlassenko performed his signature piece, the Liszt Piano Concerto no. 2 in A Major, enveloping the audience in its soft sounds before thrilling them with a cascade of octaves in the Tchaikovsky. On Sunday it was the turn of Danny Pollack, who was playing the Tchaikovsky with an orchestra for the first time and, by common consensus, fared less well than in the second round, and Liu Shikun. “Apart from brilliant musical gifts,” the conductor Kirill Kondrashin said afterward of the Chinese contestant, “he stands out for the incredible diligence that is typical of his people. During the day one literally had to drag him away from the instrument.” Even onstage, Liu took advantage of the lengthy applause to check passages from the piece he was about to play.

  That night, the jury convened one last time. Richter assumed his customary stance, but this time the others objected sharply. They wanted no more mischief with the marks, they insisted; the decision had to be collective. Gilels proposed a new voting system: each juror would simply write his choice of winner on a slip of paper and sign it. Richter reluctantly complied, and Gilels read out the slips one by one. Of the seventeen judges, fifteen voted outright for Van. Two hedged their bets, and both were foreigners. Despite his fulsome praise, Sir Arthur Bliss bracketed Van joint first prize with Liu Shikun; and Lajos Hernádi of Hungary bracketed him with Lev Vlassenko.

  The ballot for second place was more surprising: because of further hedging, it was tied between Vlassenko and Liu. Yet again the Ministry of Culture’s plan had spectacularly backfired. It was scant consolation to the Soviets that third prize went to Naum Shtarkman and fourth to Eduard Miansarov. Milena Mollova of Bulgaria came fifth, Nadia Gedda-Nova of France sixth, and Toyoaki Matsuura of Japan seventh, by default leaving Daniel Pollock with the eighth and last prize.

  Despite the brave stand taken by Gilels and Kabalevsky, this was not the end of the process. Five years after Stalin’s death the old thinking still clung on: toe the line, avoid responsibility at all costs. In a system where all decisions went through the party, there was only one way to avoid blame: refer it upward.

  Gilels spoke to Culture Minister Mikhailov, who seemed petrified by the American’s popularity and went to Khrushchev. The premier had just returned from an official trip to Hungary.

  “We don’t know what to do,” the minister began.

  “What?” Khrushchev replied curtly. “What do you mean?”

  “We now have a Tchaikovsky Competition and an American pianist who plays very well,” the minister quavered, “and we don’t know what to do.”

  Very likely Khrushchev eyed him with withering patience. “What do the others say about him? Is he the best?”

  “Yes, he is the best.”

  “In that case,” the premier grunted, “give him the first prize.”

  If you cannot catch a bird of paradise, Khrushchev was fond of saying, better take a wet hen. The outcome was not really so bad for him. It helped prove that the Soviets were not afraid of comparison with the West, even if that meant losing occasionally. And it gave a useful credibility boost to his calls for peaceful coexistence, which, for all his missile rattling, were essentially sincere. Besides, Khrushchev liked classical music only slightly less than he liked folk music, and his favorite piece was the Chopin F Minor Fantaisie. While he was in Hungary he had heard Van playing it on the radio.

  The stars were aligned for Van in Moscow. The matter was settled.

  THE ANNOUNCEMENT was due at 11:00 that night, but to give the system time to sort itself out, it had been pushed back to the following afternoon. After Liu’s performance the foreign contestants had drifted back to their hotels, and in the small hours those staying at the Peking were still sitting in their private dining room having a snack and a glass of tea when Eddik Miansarov burst in.

  “Van, you’ve won!” he cried, sweeping him up in a bear hug.

  “You can’t know that, Eddik, not yet,” Van demurred, shaking his head. “Nothing’s official till tomorrow noon.” He was still objecting when Naum Shtarkman ran in, panting heavily.

  “Vanya, you’ve won!” he said. “There’s no question about it. I just heard the news.” Van shook his head and began explaining the situation again when a uniformed conservatory official rushed in.

  “Vanyushka,” he said, grinning knowingly, “you’d better go up to your room and put on your white tie and tails.”

  Van stopped talking, smiled shakily, and headed to the door. “Everyone is going back to the conservatory now,” the official was saying as the winner walked heavily up the stairs.

  OUTSIDE THE conservatory, hundreds of hard-core fans had refused to go home and were loitering in the cold night, scrutinizing the comings and goings for clues to the results. When they saw Van and his friends approaching, they flocked over, applauding excitedly.

  In the Great Hall, the lights were dimmed and covers were draped on the chairs. Kondrashin was at the podium, the orchestra was tuning up, and technicians were setting up movie cameras to film the winning program for the many Soviet citizens without access to television. Van strode up to the piano, whipping off his crumpled sweater and throwing it to the floor, and sat down flexing his fingers. A few silent beats of Kondrashin’s baton, a few introductory bars from the orchestra, and Rachmaninoff’s great concerto once again poured from his hands. But a few minutes in, he stopped, unhappy with the way he was playing. Kondrashin tried to persuade him there was nothing wrong with it, but he shook his head, placing his huge palm on the damp back of the conductor’s white shirt. “Okh no,” he said in a plaintive Russian accent, “one more time.” They began again. After a minute of near-perfect playing, he banged his fists on the keys and started replaying some passages to himself, as if he were quite alone and there were no orchestra waiting. The musicians sat back and rested, their eyes, hands, and lips sore after four days of rehearsing all day and performing all night. Van’s friends drew near as he thumped his knees in frustration, as tense as fans whose team was losing. They groaned at the slightest flubbed note and guffawed when the exhausted brass players made a silly mistake. After four hours the cameramen got the
concerto on film. With morning light streaming in through the clerestory windows, everyone took a short break and prepared to record the Tchaikovsky. No one was surprised when the orchestra started several times in a muddle, but everyone was startled when the piano rang out as crisp and clear as a fresh-washed spring day.

  IN MARK Schubart’s hotel room the phone woke him at 4:00 a.m.

  “Van’s won!” Max Frankel shouted in his ear. He, too, had lingered at the conservatory long enough to catch a glimpse of the recording session before rushing off to the censor’s office. Schubart threw on some clothes, hurried downstairs, and sent a four-word cable to Bill Schuman at Juilliard:

  WE ARE IN ORBIT.

  This time Frankel’s piece ran across four columns of the New York Times front page, directly beneath the masthead. U.S. PIANIST, 23, WINS SOVIET CONTEST, proclaimed the headline. A large photograph showed Van shaking hands with juror Lev Oborin, with a beaming Henrietta Belayeva between them and a flashbulb about to pop. A second piece, entitled TALL AT THE KEYBOARD, profiled Van as a Man in the News and drove home its sheer unlikeliness:

  A native of the American Deep South who is the son of an oil company employee and a beneficiary of the Rockefellers: that is who stands as the cynosure of Moscow today.

  His name is Van Cliburn, and he now lives in New York.