Moscow Nights: The Van Cliburn Story-How One Man and His Piano Transformed the Cold War (73 page)

225
  
November morning:
“Cliburn Hailed in Texas” (AP),
NYT
, November 24, 1958.

225
  
Texas’s proudest brag:
VCL
, 151, 180.

225
  
first for an honoree younger than ninety:
The earlier living honoree was John Nance Garner, who was feted on his ninetieth birthday.

225
  
“PROUD HOME OF VAN CLIBURN”:
“Van Cliburn Comes Home,”
The Rotarian
, June 1959, 47.

225
  
“He’s better than Elvis by far”:
“Noisy Ovation at Matinee: Youngsters Go Wild over Van, Forget ‘Rock,’”
KNH
, December 3, 1958.

225
  
play in India:
Mary Meador, “Van Cliburn Paid Honor at Shreveport,”
KNH
, December 17, 1958.

226
  
“rushed up”:
VCL
, 173–74.

226
  
an admirer:
Winthrop Sargent in
The New Yorker
, October 25, 1958.

226
  
“flesh and blood juke box”:
VCL
, 212, quoting Paul Henry Lang in
New York Herald Tribune
, October 18, 1958.

226
  
service professional:
James M. Keller, “Van Cliburn at Bat,”
Piano and Keyboard
, September/October 1993; Stuart Isacoff, “Then &Now,”
Piano Today
, Summer 2001; “Deep in the Art of Texas,” video recording;
Van Cliburn for the Worthington Hotel
, dir. Rick Croft and William Betaille, 1992, youtube.com/watch?v=RzezkMdy1gY.

227
  
“Tucson minister friend”:
“What’s with Cliburn’s Teeth?”
Tucson Daily Citizen
, January 7, 1959.

227
  
dining at the Cliff House:
Elaine Raines, “Happy Birthday, Van Cliburn,”
Arizona Daily Star
, July 11, 2008.

227
  
“arrested at Phoenix”:
“Van Cliburn,” FBI summary, December 21, 1963 (FOIA).

227
  
North Indian House Road:
“Acclaimed Pianist Van Cliburn Had a House in Tucson,”
Arizona Daily Star
, February 27, 2013.

228
  
drowned in the backyard pool:
“Mrs. Newton White,”
Tucson Daily Citizen
, December 23, 1959;
Lawrence
(KS)
Journal-World
, February 6, 1960.

228
  
rented it out:
Mary Campbell, “Not This Time,”
Tucson Daily Citizen
, September 5, 1964.

228
  
Newton White died:
S. C. Warman, “Rev. Newton H. White Dies; Organized 2 Churches Here,”
Tucson Daily Citizen
, June 4, 1963.

228
  
handsome donation:
Van donated twelve hundred dollars, to be used to defray a student’s fees. Peter Mennin to Van Cliburn, October 18, 1963, Folder 10, Box 22, JAP.

14: IN THE HEAT OF THE KITCHEN

229
  
“Learn from Liu Shikun”:
Liu Shikun, interview with the author.

229
  
Khrushchev arrived for a summit:
The events are entertainingly recounted in Mike Dash, “Khrushchev in Water Wings: On Mao, Humiliation, and the Sino-Soviet Split,” May 4, 2012, http://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/khrushchev-in-water-wings-on-mao-humiliation-and-the-sino-soviet-split-80852370/?no-ist.

229
  
“making him the historical pivot”:
Frank Dikötter,
Mao’s Great Famine
(London: Bloomsbury, 2011), 4.

230
  
yet to deliver:
Khrushchev annulled the nuclear pact with China in June 1959.

230
  
“transcontinental missile”:
Vladislav Zubok, “The Mao-Khrushchev Conversations, 31 July–3 August 1958 and 2 October 1959,”
CWIHP Bulletin
12/13 (Fall/Winter 2001): 256; https://www.wilsoncenter.org/sites/default/files/CWIHPBulletin12–13_p2_0.pdf.

231
  
“pleasant period of thaw”:
“Moscow’s New Campaign,”
NYT
, June 26, 1958.

231
  
“blatant errors . . . gifted composers”:
“On Rectifying Errors in the Evaluation of the Operas ‘The Great Friendship,’ ‘Bogdan Khmelnitzky,’ and ‘From All One’s Heart,’” Central Committee decree,
Pravda
, June 8, 1958. See Schwarz,
Music and Musical Life
, 263–66.

231
  
printed with CIA funds:
After years of rumors, the CIA’s involvement was confirmed when it declassified the relevant documents in 2014. See http://www.foia.cia.gov/collection/doctor-zhivago.

231
  
called off:
B. Makarov, “Report from the All-Union ‘International Book’ Association to D. A. Polikarpov on the Advisability of Stopping Attempts Aimed at Preventing the Publication of B. L. Pasternak’s Novel ‘Doctor Zhivago’ in France,” February 5, 1958,
CCCP&C
, 24–25.

231
  
“low-grade reactionary hackwork”:
David Zaslavsky, “Reactionary Propaganda Uproar over a Literary Weed,”
Pravda
, October 26, 1958.

231
  
Begging Khrushchev:
Ivinskaya,
Captive of Time
, 240–41.

232
  
“mangy sheep”:
Solomon Volkov
, The Magical Chorus: A History of Russian Culture from Tolstoy to Solzhenitsyn
(New York: Knopf, 2008), 196.

232
  
Vladimir Ashkenazy:
Interview with the author.

232
  
assistant professor:
Alexander Egorov, assistant to venerable professor Konstantin Igumnov.

232
  
more gay piano teachers:
Also implicated were piano professor Vladimir Belov and Ashkenazy’s teacher Boris Zemylansky, who, like Naum Shtarkman, was an assistant to Lev Oborin.

233
  
refused to play in Moscow:
Heinrich Neuhaus told Paul Moor the story: “Slava, the Russian,”
Piano and Keyboard
189 (November/December 1997). Moor ascribed Richter’s cyclical depression, which kept him away from the piano for long stretches, to the impossibility of living a fulfilled personal life under Soviet law. See also Moor, “Sviatoslav Becomes Svyetchik,”
High Fidelity
12, no. 10 (October 1962); Moor, “Sviatoslav Richter: A Troubled Life,”
American Record Guide
60, no. 6 (November/December 1997).

233
  
“knew that Van Cliburn was a homosexual”:
“Van Cliburn,” FBI summary, February 19, 1968. The position of the individual concerned is redacted but may be inferred from the context. The date of the original report is unavailable.

233
  
anniversary of the revolution speech:
Max Frankel, “Consumer Wooed at Moscow Fete,”
NYT
, November 7, 1958.

233
  
“holiday”:
Stanford Daily
, January 5, 1959.

233
  
recent ultimatum:
In a speech of November 10, 1958.

233
  
insisted Van be invited:
Aschen Mikoyan, interview with the author, August 9, 2014.

234
  
Beaux-Arts mansion:
The embassy then occupied the current Russian ambassador’s residence, the Mrs. George Pullman House at 1125 Sixteenth Street, Northwest.

234
  
“Play, please play”:
“Mikoyan Moved to Tears as Cliburn Plays for Him” (AP),
Milwaukee Journal
, January 20, 1959.

234
  
Van’s starring role:
Harrison E. Salisbury, “Cliburn a Guest at Mikoyan Fete,”
NYT
, January 20, 1959.

234
  
outraged housewife:
Jacqueline Stevens Hughes to Mark Schubart, January 6, 1959, Folder 10, Box 17, JAD.

235
  
“ahead of the entire planet”:
Plisetskaya,
I, Maya Plisetskaya
, xv.

236
  
stood and cheered:
“Bolshoi Opening Hailed by Crowd,”
NYT
, April 17, 1959.

236
  
those of the FBI:
“Van Cliburn,” FBI summary, December 21, 1963.

236
  
La Scala:
“Cliburn Cheered at La Scala” (AP),
NYT
, June 17, 1959.

236
  
attend the Soviet exhibition:
Farnsworth Fowle, “Van Cliburn Sees Soviet Fair Here,”
NYT
, July 27, 1959; Victor Rosenberg,
Soviet-American Relations, 1953–1960: Diplomacy and Cultural Exchange During the Eisenhower Presidency
(Jefferson, NC: Mc-Farland, 2005), 123.

236
  
another fact the FBI duly recorded:
“Van Cliburn,” FBI summary, December 21, 1963.

237
  
“Divine indifference”:
Brendan Gill and Donald Stewart, “Struggle,”
The New Yorker
, August 22, 1959.

237
  
“Your music and ours”:
Leonard Bernstein and the New York Philharmonic in Moscow
, CBS TV film, 1959.

237
  
American National Exhibition:
My account is based on
Opening in Moscow
, documentary dir. D. A. Pennebaker, 1959; “Nixon in U.S.S.R. Opening U.S. Fair, Clashes with Mr. K,” newsreel footage, Universal-International News, July 27, 1959, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WIGTFK2LiXs; Dan I. Slobin, “Excerpts from a 1959 Journal: U.S. Exhibition in Moscow, 2009,” http://ihd.berkeley.edu/1959_Slobin_ US_Exhibition_Moscow.pdf; “50th Anniversary of the American Exhibits to the U.S.S.R.,” U.S. Department of State, http://www.state.gov/p/eur/ci/rs/c26472.htm; Marilyn S. Kushner, “Exhibiting Art at the American National Exhibition in Moscow, 1959: Domestic Politics and Cultural Diplomacy,”
Journal of Cold War Studies
4, no. 1 (Winter 2002): 6–26; Susan E. Reid, “Who Will Beat Whom? Soviet Reception of the American National Exhibition in Moscow, 1959,”
Kritika
9, no. 4 (Fall 2008): 855–904; Andrew Wulf,
Moscow ’59: The ‘Sokolniki Summit’ Revisited
(Los Angeles, CA: Figueroa Press, 2010); Gregory Feifer, “Fifty Years Ago, American Exhibition Stunned Soviets in Cold War,” July 23, 2009, http://www.rferl.org/content/Fifty_Years_Ago_American_Exhibition_Stunned_Soviets_in_Cold_War/1783913.html;
NKCS
, 320–26; May,
Homeward Bound
, 20–21; Taubman,
Khrushchev
, 417–18; Walter L. Hixson,
Parting the Curtain: Propaganda, Culture, and the Cold War, 1945–1961
(New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1997), 176–81;
TOML
, 172; William Safire, “The Cold War’s Hot Kitchen,”
NYT
, July 24, 2009; State Department documents 92–107 in
FRUS X:1.