Moscow Nights

by Nigel Cliff

  To give Van a break, Paul Moor took him to a concert, which turned out to be one of his most memorable experiences. Sviatoslav Richter had not played in Moscow for nearly a year—he preferred to turn up on short notice and perform on bad pianos in small halls in obscure towns—but he had decided to burn off the grime of judging by giving a recital and two concertos. The recital opened with Schubert’s great last Sonata in B-flat Major, which made Van weep unabashedly for minutes. After the Schumann Toccata, Richter launched into three Prokofiev pieces and finished with the Seventh Sonata, building up with unfathomable subtlety to a thrilling finale. The audience shouted so vehemently that he came back and played it even better. “I really don’t think I’m in a daze or anything,” Van said, turning to Moor, “but I honestly believe this is the greatest piano playing I’ve ever heard in my life.” Moor, who agreed, reported that the feeling was mutual: Richter had called Van a genius—“a word,” he had added, “I do not use lightly about performers.” Hearing that, Van cried again.

  Friday evening a “wildly pushing crowd” jammed the conservatory for Van’s prize recital and demanded seven encores. With Shostakovich listening, Van boldly played a teenage composition of his own called “Nostalgia.” Afterward, Tommy Thompson hosted a buffet supper at his residence, Spaso House. The event was nearly derailed when Van asked if he could invite several of the leading figures from the competition. The sticking point was not the Soviets but Liu Shikun: the embassy could hardly welcome the Chinese pianist as the representative of a government the United States did not recognize. With the State Department’s cognizance, the supper was declared to be a purely informal affair, and a diplomatic incident was averted. In the end Liu stayed away, perhaps on his own embassy’s advice, as did Emil Gilels, Lev Vlassenko, and the Soviet violinists. But Shostakovich brought his wife and his son, Maxim; Kabalevsky and Kondrashin also came with their wives; and Richter, who had been in the audience, briefly put in a rare social appearance. Danny Pollack had left to play a tour of southern Soviet cities before returning to Vienna, but Jerry Lowenthal was present, and overheard Van talking with Tommy Thompson: “I said to Mr. Khrushchev,” he was explaining to the ambassador, “that in this post-Sputnik age we have to love each other.” How about that, marveled the earnest Lowenthal; the mad-looking kid had turned out to be a natural diplomat.

  Thompson was fully aware of the impression Van had made on the Soviet Union. When Secretary Dulles sought his opinion of the young pianist, the ambassador wired back that his victory had done much to disabuse the Soviets of the impression that the United States was a nation of Philistines. He added a caveat, though: “Because of his immaturity and some personality traits, there is some danger that public and official adulation will go to his head and I took occasion of [a] luncheon which I gave for contestants to give him some friendly advice.” More alarm bells rang when Van found time to write a short article for United Press that was reprinted across America. “There are no political barriers to music,” he boldly began:

  The same blood running through Americans also runs through the Soviet people and compels us to create and enjoy the same art.

  I’ve become even more aware of this since I have been in Moscow. What has thrilled me so much is the great spirit of musical unity achieved here at the Tchaikovsky Competition by the different peoples of the world whose governments are at political loggerheads . . .

  Russian reaction to my playing has been a wonderfully heartfelt one. These people have long felt that America has a fine culture but until recently have had not much proof of this. I helped to show them that their feelings are right.

  They are so pleased to learn that America loves their music—Tchaikovsky, Rachmaninoff, Shostakovich and other Russian composers—as much as they do.

  In his enthusiasm to build bridges, Van also made a big fuss about his friendship with Eddik Miansarov and Naum Shtarkman, recounting their first meeting and emphasizing that they had stuck together ever since. Apparently it never crossed his mind that, for their sake, such a show of warmth to a Westerner might have been better kept out of the world’s press.

  As Van left the next day, with Henrietta and Paul Moor, for a victory tour of Leningrad, Riga, Kiev, and Minsk, the U.S. embassy in Moscow kept up its dispatches to the State Department. “Among Moscow teenagers he appears to have somewhat the same appeal which Elvis Presley has in the United States,” Minister-Counselor Richard H. Davis reported. “On the occasion of his recent departure by train for a concert in Leningrad, a crowd of approximately 200 teenage girls saw him off, showering him with flowers, requests for autographs, and chanting in English, ‘we love you.’” In the old czarist capital, there were fevered scenes as scalpers prevented students from getting tickets, and Van spontaneously opened his rehearsal to thousands of disappointed fans. Among them was the schoolgirl who had watched his finals on TV; she had since gone Van-mad and felt she was in heaven witnessing this mysterious messenger from a distant country in the flesh. Some who had obtained tickets to the evening concert had waited in line for three days and nights, and halfway through the concert, one woman fainted; others openly wept. Afterward, strangers ran up and hugged and kissed Van, shyly holding out presents. He hugged them back, picking up one girl and twirling her round, and he endeared himself still more when he made a pilgrimage to Tchaikovsky’s grave, dug up a handful of earth, and took it away in a jar. Equally moved, Van called Rildia Bee and told her that he had performed on the stage where her teacher Arthur Friedheim had played.

  SOMEHOW BILL Judd managed to get through to his most famous client, and after they spoke he contacted the State Department, which cabled the embassy in Moscow:

  NEW YORK AGENTS OF VAN CLIBURN REPORT FROM TELEPHONE CONVERSATION WITH HIM THAT HE MAY BE UNDER CONSIDERABLE RUSSIAN PRESSURE AGAINST HIS WILL TO EXTEND HIS TOUR OF RUSSIA AND THUS JEOPARDIZE FIRM US CONCERT COMMITMENTS. HIS AGENTS REQUEST THAT YOU EXTEND APPROPRIATE ASSISTANCE TO HIM.

  The embassy tracked Van down while he was still in Leningrad, and he explained that he was trying to finish his tour in time to give one last concert in Moscow and then rest for three or four days before flying home. He added that he hoped to return to the USSR afterward, in late May or June. This did not sound like a man who was under duress, and soon another telegram arrived from the State Department, this one marked SECRET:

  DEPARTMENT HAS RECEIVED REPORT THAT MANAGER OF VAN CLIBURN, WHO HAS BEEN IN TELEPHONIC COMMUNICATION WITH CLIBURN IN MOSCOW, AND ANOTHER FRIEND OF CLIBURN ARE CONCERNED OVER WHAT THEY CONSIDER TO BE DECIDED CHANGE IN ATTITUDE OF YOUNG PIANIST. IN ONE CONVERSATION CLIBURN REPORTEDLY STATED HE WAS PLANNING TO RETURN TO MOSCOW FOR LONG VACATION. IN ANOTHER CONVERSATION WHEN QUERIED AS TO HIS PLANS WHEN IN WASHINGTON, CLIBURN STATED THAT IF PRESIDENT WANTED TO SEE HIM WHITE HOUSE COULD GET IN TOUCH WITH HIM. ADDITIONALLY, THESE FRIENDS NOTE THAT CLIBURN HAS BECOME QUITE LAUDATORY OF HIS RECEPTION AND STAY IN SOVIET UNION. UNDER CIRCUMSTANCES, THEY ARE PARTICULARLY APPREHENSIVE AS TO WHAT MIGHT HAPPEN WHEN CLIBURN FIRST RETURNS TO US AND MEETS PRESS. THEY BELIEVE HE IS LIABLE TO MAKE SOME VERY UNWISE STATEMENTS IF QUERIED ON POLITICAL MATTERS, ABOUT WHICH HE KNOWS VERY LITTLE, PARTICULARLY IN VIEW OF HIS REPORTED CHANGE IN ATTITUDE. THEY SPECULATE IN THIS REGARD THAT CLIBURN MAY HAVE BEEN “APPROACHED” BY SOVIETS.

  The information, which was doubtless obtained by listening in on Van’s calls, had first been passed to the office of FBI director J. Edgar Hoover. According to the report, Van had told Judd that he intended to stay in Russia indefinitely “and further stated ‘If Eisenhower wants to see me, he knows where he can find me.’” The informant added that Judd was “very much concerned in that he believes when Clibern [sic] returns he will make a fool out of himself with his pro-Soviet attitude.” Hoover suggested that the president’s press secretary, James Hagerty, be alerted and added, “Also suggest Johnson (Senator) be confidentially advised.” The two men were duly informed; Hagerty replied that the president was committed to meeting the young pianist, but the White House �
�would play it very cautiously from now on.”

  Fears that Van’s enthusiasm might convert a cultural triumph into a propaganda debacle were bad enough, but the suggestion that Soviet recruiters might have turned him was deeply grave. When he finally returned to Moscow on May 10, somewhat rested after swallowing another potent Soviet sleeping pill on the night train from Minsk, he was met by a party of U.S. embassy officials who protested that they hadn’t spent any real time with him and declared that this was to be his embassy day. Two days later Minister-Counselor Davis replied to Foggy Bottom with a lengthy telegram, also marked SECRET. Van was planning to bring his parents to the Soviet Union that summer and to return for three months the following spring, he noted. But he had “so far kept away from any political comment and I would judge from my talk with him today he will continue to do so.” While the young pianist was undoubtedly naive and politically unsophisticated, Davis concluded, “I would doubt that he has been ‘approached’ by Soviets or that he has any idea other than pursuing his musical career in US and abroad in fashion normal to life of an international artist.”

  Between his triumph and the traditional heated Russian hospitality, Van would have been hard-hearted indeed if he had not lost his head a little. During his absence, hundreds of letters and boxes of pink floral telegrams had piled up in his hotel room, some simply addressed, “Conservatory, Vanya Kleeburn.” Many came from students: not only musicians but entire classes at the Faculty for History and Philology of the Ivanovo State Pedagogical Institute and the Faculty of Soil Science and Biology of Moscow State University, who signed themselves, “Your friends forever.” Others came from a forestry engineer, a geographer, and a telegraph operator named Saida Nurmukhamedova, who asked Van, “on behalf of all Soviet telegraph operators, to pass our friendly greetings to the American telegraph operators. Our telegraph operators will always be happy to hear your exceptional playing.” She added, “When I have a son I shall definitely name him after you.” Many declared undying love, sometimes in the form of tearful verses written on paper adorned with roses or lilies of the valley. “Vanyusha my dear,” one simply read, “please stay in Moscow and the USSR. Nowhere else would people value and love you more.” Two girls in the seventh grade told him, “You set our hearts on fire.” Other letters were anonymous, including one from a pianist, a graduate of the Moscow Conservatory, who had been reduced to tears by Van’s Rachmaninoff. “How hard it is going to be to say good-bye,” she concluded. “You will probably never know about me, but I want you to know that when you leave you will take with you a piece of my heart, and that I will be with you till the end of my days. Don’t forget me. I won’t tell you my name. What for?” Occasionally there was a hint of distrust for the West—one writer asked Van to pass on his best wishes “to all honest Americans”—or a brave barb at the Soviet Union. The students of the Vilnius Conservatory wrote saying how delighted they were that he had won and how sorry they were to be “living in this nasty place that isn’t one of the cities that you will visit.” Yet many letters, some very long and earnest, voiced hopes that Van’s triumph would improve world relations. “I would like to express my deep gratitude to our compatriot Rosina Levina who has instilled in you the love for Russian music and the Russian people,” wrote twenty-year-old medical student Klara Gribanova. “I would like the friendship between the young people all round the world to become even stronger.” In comradely fashion, she signed off, “With a warm handshake.”

  Gifts had also piled up uncontrollably, many treasured heirlooms that had been hidden from the authorities and uncovered, polished, mended, and passed on to the young visitor as secret tokens of lives unlived. An unnamed family gave him a porcelain platter decorated with a troika that they had cherished for seventy years: “Look at it in your bad moments,” read the accompanying card, “and think there are people who love you and always will.” Most moving of all was a lilac shrub that a group of students had clubbed together to buy after they heard he wanted to plant one on Rachmaninoff’s grave in New York.

  If he had stolen the Soviets’ hearts, they had equally stolen his. “I tell you,” he confided to Paul Moor, “these are my people. I guess I’ve always had a Russian heart. I’d give them three quarts of blood and four pounds of flesh. I’ve never felt so at home anywhere in my whole life.” He was speaking in the heat of the moment and never expected his words to appear in print, even when Moor mentioned that his Time article might become a cover story. “Oh sure,” Van thought, not taking it too seriously. He that expecteth nothing is never disappointed.

  THERE WAS no chance of any rest before leaving Moscow. He was invited to ballets and operas at the Bolshoi and visited the Central Music School, where he played a duet with a young pianist while yet another film was shot. There were more recording sessions, one lasting until half past five in the morning. By the time of his final marathon with the Moscow State Symphony, they had shared the stage for three concerts and forty-five hours of recordings. “We have something for you,” the players said as he entered the hall, and they presented him with an album containing pictures of every place he had visited during his stay. With it was an enamel box of chocolates decorated with scenes from Pushkin’s fairy tales, an enamel cigarette case for his favorite Kents, and a poster for their final concert, signed by every member of the orchestra.

  The next day, he walked out to take his place in the Great Hall one last time. He picked up a letter from the keyboard, used it to brush off some petals, read it, and put it on the floor, then thought better of it and slid it in his pocket. The orchestra players craned to see what he was doing, and laughter rippled through the hall. The accumulated tension dissolved, but the moment he began to play, the audience and the seventeen million watching on state television hung forward and let his poetry flow through them. At the end, the rhythmic clapping echoed and reechoed like thunder. Women rushed up to present flowers, and a man handed up a balalaika. After three encores, Van stepped forward and read a message in Russian. Pronouncing the words with great effort, he said that he had come to love Soviet audiences and would try to be worthy of his gold medal. Since he could take only half the prize money out of the country (and none of his earnings), he asked the Ministry of Culture to establish two memorial prizes at the Moscow Conservatory in the names of Josef Lhévinne and Sergei Rachmaninoff. He also asked that Lev Vlassenko, Naum Shtarkman, and Eddik Miansarov be sent to perform in America. “Today,” he ended, “when I have to tell you ‘goodbye,’ my heart is full of memories and sadness. Until the end of my days I cannot forget your kindness. Thank you!”

  Then he went back to the piano. Earlier in his visit he had heard the melancholy strains of “Moscow Nights,” the hit song from last summer’s World Festival of Youth. Now he improvised his own version, gently, ardently, a tribute to the city and its people. The audience melted in delight and love for this romantic stranger who loved them. They cried, and the viewers at home cried, and the next day they talked about nothing but their feelings and their tears.

  In the morning a reporter for Sovetskaya Kultura tracked Van down in his hotel room, where he was exchanging photographs and embraces with the violinist Valery Klimov while a team from Moscow Radio recorded his parting message to the Soviet people. The journalist managed to get in a question when a call came in from Van’s parents. “I’m so sad to leave Russia,” he overheard Van say to them: “I would love to come to Russia with you.” As the interview went haltingly on, an artist sketched Van’s portrait, and when it was finished Van looked and decided he liked it. He took it, thought for a moment, and wrote on it: “To the readers of Sovetskaya Kultura newspaper, I would like to express my deep satisfaction about being able to visit Russia and play for such a captivating audience and to fall in love with the Soviet people. My most heartfelt greetings, devotion and gratitude. Van Cliburn.”

  Halfway through the conversation the news came that a third Soviet Sputnik had been launched. Van broke out in an admiring smile and exclaimed, �
�Bravo! Bravo! Bravo!”

  THE FOLLOWING day, he headed to Vnukovo Airport with many new friends, fourteen extra suitcases, and one six-foot lilac shrub. The Intourist officials refused to let him pay the surcharge for overweight baggage, which at 4,800 rubles approached a fifth of his winnings. As the cameras whirred and crowds of fans, officials, and students pressed in, he made a little farewell speech, again in Russian, and backed toward the waiting plane, his cheeks wet with tears. Henrietta Belayeva glowed with pride. She had lived Van’s triumph every day and was as madly in love with him as was Naum. They and Eddik and everyone else waved as the SAS plane took off for Copenhagen.

  When it could no longer be seen, the crowd drifted thoughtfully apart. For many people, life had perceptibly brightened, but it was far from clear that the mighty gears of state would shift to match. Two weeks earlier, on May 1, Labor Day, Khrushchev had watched from the Lenin-Stalin mausoleum’s viewing balcony as vast squads of troops goose-stepped in unison and bulky military hardware rolled past. Heavy rain had turned Red Square into a black lake, but nothing could dim the premier’s grin. Standing stiffly at his side, a reminder to the West of its clumsy meddling abroad and (so Khrushchev thought) the talismanic power of Soviet missiles to check its ambitions, was the hero of Suez and his new ally, Egyptian president Gamal Abdel Nasser.

  Later in the month, the premier changed tack. Heeding scientists’ warnings that years of nuclear tests were poisoning the atmosphere, Khrushchev announced a unilateral moratorium just as the United States was about to begin a new round. To his fury, America went ahead. A few weeks later, Imre Nagy, the leader of the failed Hungarian anti-Soviet revolution of 1956, was executed after a secret trial: in a cynical ploy worthy of Stalin, Khrushchev allegedly ordered his death as a lesson to aspiring rebels. When protests broke out round Soviet embassies in the West, busloads of Soviet demonstrators arrived at the American embassy in Moscow and lay about the building in tit-for-tat revenge.