Moscow Nights: The Van Cliburn Story-How One Man and His Piano Transformed the Cold War (62 page)

11
  
sixty-two times:
Karl Aage Rasmussen,
Sviatoslav Richter: Pianist
, trans. Russell Dees (Boston: Northeastern University Press, 2010), 124.

1: THE PRODIGY

15
  
“Sug, I think”:
Video recording VC-2162 (Reel 36), Rildia Bee Cliburn interviewed by Peter Rosen [1989], VCA.

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room 322:
TM1.

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“Babe . . . our family”:
Rildia Bee Cliburn interview, VCA.

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“Harvey Lavan (Van) Cliburn”:
Wayne Lee Gay, “Rildia Cliburn, Mother of Famed Pianist, Dies,”
FWS-T
, August 4, 1994.

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met Sergei Rachmaninoff:
Van often told the tale that his parents traced his decision to be a pianist to the night when Rachmaninoff played in Shreveport at the invitation of the committee to which Rildia Bee belonged. Van was supposed to attend the concert, the story went, but had caught chicken pox and had to stay at home; instead, he listened to it on the radio, and when Rildia Bee returned, she regaled him with every detail. This appears impossible. Van generally gave the date of this concert as November 14, 1938, though some accounts say 1939; he subsequently made his Carnegie Hall debut on November 14, 1954, and often noted the coincidence. But Rachmaninoff performed in Shreveport only on January 24, 1923, and November 14, 1932 (on the fifteenth, he wrote the letter lamenting the dire attendance), before Van was born. On November 14, 1938, Rachmaninoff appeared in Ames, Iowa, and on November 14, 1939, he performed in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania; he had no engagements in Texas or Louisiana during the 1938/39 season. He did, however, play in Fort Worth on November 15, 1937 (on the fourteenth, he was in St. Louis), when Van was three. It seems that two stories—one of Rildia Bee’s involvement in Rachmaninoff’s 1932 visit to Shreveport, another of Van listening to his later performance on the radio—were consciously or unconsciously blended into a single parable of the passing of the torch from master to student. For a complete list of Rachmaninoff’s American concert dates, see Robin Sue Gehl,
Reassessing a Legacy: Rachmaninoff in America, 1918–43
(PhD diss., University of Cincinnati, 2008), Appendix D: 252–97.

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railroad station agent:
TM1.

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“Business is lamentable”:
Rachmaninoff to Eugene Somov, November 15, 1932, quoted in Sergei Bertensson and Jay Leyda,
Sergei Rachmaninoff: A Lifetime in Music
(Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2001), 290.

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Shreveport paper:
Sunflower Daly, “Rachmaninoff Wins by Large Margin in Monday Night Game,”
ST
, November 15, 1932.

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how that happened:
Van and Rildia Bee told the story many times, with minor variations. My main source is Peter Rosen’s interview with Rildia Bee, VCA.

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regular lessons:
TM1.

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“Now, when we’re taking a lesson”:
Ibid. The lesson routine is from the same dispatch.

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“Well, son, we’ll see about that”:
Van Cliburn, quoted in
VC
, 10.

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medical missionary:
John Davidson, “Every Good Boy Does Fine,”
Texas Monthly
15, no. 5 (May 1987): 172. Other sources quoted Harvey as simply wanting Van to be a doctor: see TM1.

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“Mommy, Daddy, take me there”:
VCG.

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born a Texan:
Rildia Bee Cliburn interview, VCA.

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draw off their neighbors’ crude:
Stanley Walker, “Kilgore Has Oil and Van Cliburn, Too,”
NYT Magazine
, September 23, 1962.

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ten thousand dollars:
TM2.

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old family friend:
Gay, “Rildia Cliburn, Mother of Famed Pianist, Dies.”

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tiny one-story white house:
Tom Martin superciliously describes the house and its contents in TM2.

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“Van, you have such long hands”:
TM1.

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“superior” fifteen times:
Ibid.

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“I can’t play . . . and God”:
Van Cliburn, “What Is Success?”
Guideposts Magazine
, February 1959.

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“Well, you know . . . wonderful”:
Van Cliburn, interview by Paul Holdengräber, May 15, 2012, http://www.nypl.org/audiovideo/live-nypl-christies-present-van-cli burn-conversation-paul-holdengräber.

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“Well, all right then”:
TM1.

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“It hurts me” . . . “help me”:
Van Cliburn, interview by Paul Holdengräber.

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nosebleeds:
TM1. They began at age eight, when Van contracted scarlet fever.

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taxi driver:
Ibid. Another possibility was a preacher.

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insured for a million dollars:
As remembered by Coach Bradford. Gay, “Rildia Cliburn, Mother of Famed Pianist, Dies.”

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Bob Waters . . . C. L. Newsome:
TM1.

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Mr. Belvedere:
TM2.

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Thespian Club . . . Spanish Club . . . Student Council:
TM1.

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Winifred Hamilton:
Ibid. Martin interviewed Michael Gehlen, the other student with a crush on her.

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“You already have the best teacher”:
Dolores Fredrickson, “Van Cliburn Remembers His Remarkable Mother,”
Clavier
, March 1996.

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“Sonny Boy”:
Davidson, “Every Good Boy Does Fine,” 172.

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two-hundred-dollar prize:
PFJA. A handwritten note in the same file puts the prize money at $250.

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with the Houston Symphony Orchestra:
On April 12, 1947. Sound recording txu-hs-0048, “Houston Symphony Concert, Apr. 12, 1947,” Austin Fine Arts Library, University of Texas.

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“the warmonger and imperialist oppressor”:
Tim Tzouliadis,
The Forsaken
(London: Little, Brown, 2008), 259.

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Central Committee . . . issued a resolution:
These events began in January 1948, after Stalin reacted violently to the opera
Velikaya druzhba
(The Great Friendship), by Vano Muradeli. The recriminations spread in numerous meetings, the Central Committee decree of February 10, and the First All-Union Congress of Soviet Composers, held April 19–28. See Kiril Tomoff,
Creative Union: The Professional Organization of Soviet Composers, 1939–1953
(Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2006), 122–51; Per Skans, “The 1948 Formalism Campaign,” in Ian MacDonald,
The New Shostakovich
(London: Pimlico, 2006), 322–34; and Boris Schwarz,
Music and Musical Life in Soviet Russia, 1917–1970
(London: Barrie and Jenkins, 1972), 213–28.

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“grunting and scraping”:
Martin Sixsmith, “The Secret Rebel,”
Guardian
, July 15, 2006.

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“muddled, nerve-wracking”:
Tomoff,
Creative Union
, 123.

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“enemies of Russian music”:
Ibid.

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“Once again . . . criticism”:
Letter to
Sovetskaya Muzyka
, 1948, quoted in Rasmussen,
Sviatoslav Richter
, 124.

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“Jump thru the window”:
Terry Klefstad, “Shostakovich and the Peace Conference,”
Music &Politics
6, no. 2 (Summer 2012).

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“bag of ticks and grimaces”:
Elizabeth Wilson,
Shostakovich: A Life Remembered
(London: Faber, 1994), 462.

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“hatemongers . . . outright war”:
NYT
, March 28, 1949.

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“suave radio baritone”:
Nicolas Nabokov,
Old Friends and New Music
(London: Hamish Hamilton, 1951), 204.

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“not a free man”:
Ibid., 205.

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including classical music:
At various times Elmer Bernstein, Leonard Bernstein, Aaron Copland, Lena Horne, and Dimitri Mitropoulos were under investigation.

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“It’s by Rimsky-Korsakov”:
Frances Stonor Saunders,
Who Paid the Piper? The CIA and the Cultural Cold War
(London: Granta, 1999), 196.

2: ROOM 412

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“Honey . . . ah’ve come to study with y’all”:
There are several versions of this well-known line: “Ah’ve come to study with ya’ll, honey” (Jeaneane Dowis Lipman, “Rosina: A Memoir,”
The American Scholar
65, no. 3 [Summer 1996]: 373); “Honey, I’m here to study with you” (
VCL
, 48); and “Honey, Ah’m goin’ to study with you” (“The All-American Virtuoso,”
Time
, May 19, 1958).

31
  
Catherine the Great . . . droshky driver:
Harold Schonberg, quoted in Robert K. Wallace,
A Century of Music-Making: The Lives of Josef and Rosina Lhévinne
(Blooming-ton: Indiana University Press, 1976), 268.

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He had telephoned her:
This is one of those small but telling stories that survive in several different forms, presumably to drive biographers mad. Rosina told Abram Chasins about the phone call for his 1959 book. Van, on the other hand, told Howard Reich for his 1993 biography that this conversation took place in person, and Reich places it prior to the Juilliard entrance examinations, where he suggests Rosina heard Van play and decided to accept him. It seems unlikely that Van would have been assigned a teacher before he had auditioned for a place at the school, and Reich’s version is also contradicted by the information of Jeaneane Dowis and, further on in Reich’s book, of Josef Raeiff, who states that he was appointed Van’s teacher when Van started at the school. Rosina told both Chasins and Robert K. Wallace the story of the impromptu meeting by the elevator, and she told both that some of her students convinced her to give Van a hearing, which seems to have been a private affair and not part of the entrance auditions. So much is confirmed by a letter Rildia Bee wrote to Rosina shortly after Thanksgiving Day 1951, in which she noted that Van “would have been terribly disappointed had you not ‘squeezed’ him into your class.” The comment would have been redundant had Rildia Bee already known that Van was enrolled with Rosina when she arrived with him at the start of the semester. In her notes for an interview, Rosina writes of Van, “When he was 17 years old . . . he arrived in N.Y., two of my pupils introduced him to me and he said that he wanted to study with me.” It appears that Van conflated three episodes in his memory—the school audition, the telephone call, and the private audition for Rosina—possibly to make a more decorous scene out of the confusion. I have made my best stab at adjudicating between the accounts. See
VC
, 41–42;
VCL
, 47–48; Dowis, “Rosina: A Memoir,” 373; Wallace,
Century of Music-Making
, 270; Rildia Bee O’Bryan Cliburn, letter to Rosina Lhévinne, n.d. [December 1951], Folder 19, Box 2, RLP; Rosina Lhévinne notes for an interview, Folder 17B, Box 29, RLP.