Moscow Nights

by Nigel Cliff

  AT LUNCHTIME Henrietta came up behind and touched him, and he jumped. She pulled him away and took him to the cafeteria, where there were a few familiar faces. Daniel Pollack, whom Van hadn’t seen since Rosina’s class, had come by train from Vienna, where he was studying on a Fulbright scholarship. He was in a foul mood. Since December he had been practicing ten hours a day, and it was only when he and his young wife, Noemi, arrived in Moscow and were dining with some fellow contestants that he discovered he had prepared the wrong pieces. His Austrian professor, who had read him the required repertoire, had apparently gotten in a muddle, and Pollack had come to Moscow armed with too many modern Soviet pieces and no Tchaikovsky concerto at all. After a sleepless night, he attended Shostakovich’s daily surgery, where he explained the situation and offered to withdraw. The composer was terrified of provoking an international incident and called an emergency meeting of the Organizing Committee, which suspected Pollack was making some kind of political statement and shunted the matter to the jury, which had yet to pronounce.

  Also unofficially representing Juilliard in the piano competition was the studious Jerome Lowenthal, who was studying on a Fulbright in Paris. The three had not been friends, and amid the tensions of the competition they exchanged little more than pleasantries. There was a third American pianist whom Van knew: twenty-six-year-old Norman Shetler, originally of Dubuque, Iowa, had briefly been part of the same set of young New York pianists that included Jimmy Mathis and John Browning. The son of a self-taught all-round musician and band organizer, Shetler had enrolled in Juilliard, but before he could attend, he was drafted into the army, where he served mostly as a typist. He was also currently a student in Vienna and had become infatuated with Europe; a trip on the wild side paid for by the Soviet government had seemed just the ticket. Besides, ever since he heard a record by Sviatoslav Richter, he had dreamed of studying with him, and he had brought along a gift in the hope of pinning down the elusive virtuoso.

  With most of the other foreigners, including several pretty French girls whom everyone noticed, there was a language barrier. But the Soviet contestants were eager to befriend the visitors, and did their best to overcome it. They and Van began pointing at objects and teaching one another the words in their respective languages, cigarettes twirling in their hands. Russian proverbs turned out to be very similar to Texan sayings, and Van began to feel surprisingly at home.

  Back in his rehearsal studio there was a knock at the door, and a tall, handsome young man entered. He had curly black hair, fleshy lips, and large brown eyes behind semi-rimless glasses.

  “Welcome to Moscow!” he said in English, smiling warmly. “My name is Eduard Miansarov, but call me Eddik.” He explained that he was originally from Minsk, in Belarus, but had studied at the conservatory and was also a competitor. They spent two hours playing and singing together until a second Soviet pianist joined them and introduced himself as Naum Shtarkman. A mild, romantic character whose mother worked in the conservatory cloakroom—his Ukrainian Jewish father had died in the war—Shtarkman had made his debut in the Great Hall at twelve and, the previous year, had won first prize in a competition in Lisbon. At thirty he was older than the upper age limit for the Moscow competition and was already an assistant professor, but the organizers had slipped him in as a backup in case Lev Vlassenko self-destructed. Van and his two new Soviet friends were soon inseparable.

  That evening there was a commotion outside as the eighty-one-year-old dowager queen of Belgium arrived in a mink coat. A famed patron of the arts who lent her name to the prestigious Brussels piano competition, Elisabeth was known as “the Red Queen” for her penchant for visiting Communist countries. The guest of honor was welcomed by militiamen, students, and women in headscarves as she placed a huge bouquet at the base of Tchaikovsky’s statue.

  Back at the Peking Hotel a dining room had been set aside for the use of the contestants. Russian restaurants were not for the impatient, and this one was no different: The waiter carefully inscribed the order on his pad and informed the bookkeeper, who made her own entry and issued a slip to be passed to the kitchen. The kitchen staff then made an entry in their book, after which the food could be prepared. When the dish was ready, its appearance was recorded on a slip that was handed to the waiter, who took it to the bookkeeper, who made a new entry confirming that the ordered food had been prepared and then gave another slip to the waiter, which he took back to the kitchen and exchanged for the dish, which he was then permitted to serve, though not before endorsing his notepad to the effect that the item previously entered was now on its way to be eaten. When it arrived, the food was often surprisingly good, though invariably stone cold. Luckily there was caviar. Thorunn Johannsdottir, a statuesque young Icelandic contestant, gave Van her portion every day, and he slurped it happily down. She had already heard the other contestants gossiping about him. “My God, you know he’s Texan,” they said. Unlike nearly every other competitor, he had never been to Europe before, which made him even odder.

  THE NEXT day it was snowing again, and a biting north wind had set in. The news on the street was that Nikita Khrushchev had finally consolidated his grip on the machinery of state. Bulganin, the last remaining June plotter, had been ousted as chairman of the Council of Ministers and demoted to his old job of running the state bank. Like Stalin, Khrushchev was now both first secretary of the Communist Party and premier of the Soviet Union, which gave him virtually dictatorial powers. With his hands on both main levers, he appointed himself commander in chief by creating a Defense Council and installing himself in its chair.

  Back at the conservatory, Van ran into the tall, thin figure of Liu Shikun, who took his lessons on the same floor as Van’s studio. They recognized each other from the booklet of competitors and shook hands. Van showed him his room, and they played for each other, Liu starting with Chopin’s Polonaise in A-flat Major, op. 53. He had a big sound, played with attack on a large scale, and was brilliantly fast and precise. Van applauded, and hugged him, gesturing that Liu’s technique was much better than his own. Then Van played Liszt’s Liebestraum, and Liu applauded, too, thinking that Van was strangely innocent for someone four years older, like a big cute kid.

  With some practice behind him Van had a little time to look around. In the conservatory’s main entrance hall, modeled after the Parthenon, with cloakrooms to either side of the columns, there was an exhibition on Tchaikovsky, a showcase of handcrafted Soviet violins, and kiosks selling sheet music, books, and special editions. The violin competition was now coming to an end, and Van slipped in one night to listen. Of the eight finalists, six were Soviets, one was Romanian, and one, Juilliard’s Joyce Flissler, was American. After the last performance, on Saturday March 29, word spread that the winner was Valery Klimov, a regular soloist with the Moscow Philharmonic, who was originally from Kiev; Flissler came in seventh. Klimov’s teacher was the great David Oistrakh, who was chairman of the violin jury, which also included violinist Efrem Zimbalist, who was Russian Jewish by birth but had moved to the United States before the Bolsheviks came to power. A Soviet composer spread rumors that Zimbalist strongly disagreed with the jury’s decision and had refused to sign the protocol and diplomas. He also claimed that Zimbalist had sent a telegram to the distinguished French pianist Marguerite Long warning her not to come to Moscow to serve on the piano jury. Controversy and scandal ensued.

  Overnight the temperature dropped to minus seventeen Celsius.

  At 9:30 a.m. on Sunday, the piano competition commenced with a meeting of the jury and contestants. There was some confusion about the number of entrants—for the good reason that the organizers wanted to deflect attention from the true figures. Twenty-five violinists had taken part instead of the anticipated twenty-nine, and of the fifty expected pianists, only thirty-six were present. The absentees included three Americans: Denver Oldham, a Juilliard graduate who was studying in London; Gladys Stein, who had studied at Columbia and was now in Vienna; and Trudi Martin, who had
studied at UCLA. It was not clear whether they had been deterred by the required repertoire, the cost of travel, or the reputation of Red Moscow. Besides the four Americans who had made it, the contestants came from Argentina, Bulgaria, Canada, China, Czechoslovakia, Ecuador, France, Hungary, Israel, Japan, Mexico, Poland, Portugal, Romania, the USSR, and West Germany. Six were excused from the first round because they had won first prizes in international competitions, among them Lev Vlassenko, Naum Shtarkman, and, strangely, Danny Pollack and Jerry Lowenthal, who did not meet the criteria but who were perhaps given a pass on the supposition that the Fulbright was evidence of superior attainment. Since the Soviets did not recognize the Leventritt Award, Van was required to play. The thirty contestants drew lots, skipping number thirteen, and Van drew number fifteen.

  As for the judges, they comprised perhaps the most formidable piano jury ever assembled. Alongside the sturdy Gilels and the lugubrious Richter was their teacher, Heinrich Neuhaus; and Vladimir Ashkenazy’s teacher, Lev Oborin. The Russian Dmitri Kabalevsky and the Englishman Sir Arthur Bliss represented composers, and the other judges came from Austria, Belgium, Brazil, Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia, France, Hungary, Italy, Poland, Romania, and the USSR. All told, there were twelve judges from the Soviet Bloc and five from elsewhere, the latter carefully chosen from different countries and schools of playing to prevent them from forming a cabal.

  By now the authorities had decided that Danny Pollack should stay in the competition, playing the pieces he had prepared, with the stipulation that if he reached the finals, he would be obliged to play a Tchaikovsky concerto. He spent the five days excluded from the first round learning one, though he was more remarked upon among the other contestants for constantly French-kissing his new bride in the conservatory hallways.

  Van’s turn did not come until the morning of Wednesday, April 2, which gave him more precious days to practice. Amid the novelty and excitement, he remembered to take himself to the International Post Office and Telephone Exchange in the Artists’ Foyer upstairs in the main building and send a telegram to Rosina Lhévinne, who was playing a concert at Juilliard that night:

  LOVE AND THOUGHTS WITH YOU TONIGHT FIRST PRELIMINARY APRIL 2 MORNING HAPPY BIRTHDAY INDESCRIBABLE JOY EXCITEMENT

  Public interest was so intense that the preliminary rounds had been moved from the conservatory’s small hall to the Bolshoi Zal, the Great Hall whose roof rose high above the main buildings. The evening before Van was due to play, he was given a midnight slot to try out its piano. As he climbed the wide, deep staircase, Rachmaninoff’s big E-flat Minor “Étude-Tableau,” op. 33, drifted out of the hall like the voice of Russia itself. He listened as if he were hearing it for the first time. At the top he crossed the broad foyer with its heavy rugs and peered into a dark anteroom. The glow from a pin light spilled over a bust of Mussorgsky. Through the open door he could see the stage; at the piano was Nadia Gedda-Nova, a French pianist of Russian parentage who cut a glamorous figure with her upswept curls. A great proscenium arch framed her, and behind, in front of a huge pipe organ, was a blown-up photograph of Tchaikovsky garlanded with flowers. Under the high clerestory windows, roundels of Russian and Western composers dignified the walls, and apricot velvet drapes and seats, elaborate plasterwork, and brass light fittings in the form of two trumpets and a lyre completed the fairy-tale scene.

  Outside the door Van sat down, got up, and paced back and forth, thinking of the greats whose music these walls contained: Tchaikovsky and Rubinstein, Rachmaninoff and Scriabin, Josef and Rosina Lhévinne. The beauty in his mind was not just a dream now: it was all around. An intoxicating rush of bliss swept through him, and his last nerves dissolved away. Here he was, a twenty-three-year-old American, having the time of his life in Moscow at the height of the Cold War.

  Back at the hotel he placed a call to Kilgore. The local operator connected him to the long-distance operator, who flatly stated that it was impossible to patch him through to the United States for at least another day. Foreigners quickly learned that there was a trick to this, as to everything else in the Soviet Union. If the caller was a man and the operator a woman, a few minutes of outrageous flirting dramatically reduced the wait to an hour. The phone duly rang, and the operators handed along the call from Moscow to London to the exchange in White Plains, New York, which rang through to the Cliburns. Van told his parents when he would be playing and asked them to pray for him. They prayed for him to do God’s will and for the strength to cope with success or failure. Afterward, Harvey called the local Baptist, Methodist, and Presbyterian ministers, and soon they were asking the whole town to pray, too.

  AT AN ungodly hour on Wednesday morning, Van buttoned his sole dress shirt and attached a wing collar lent him by a friend. He tied his white tie, pulled a ratty gray Shetland sweater over his head, and shrugged on his dress jacket.

  Outside, the daytime temperature had finally crept above freezing, but a brisk east wind was blowing. Ducking inside the conservatory, he headed straight for the Artists’ Foyer, and at 9:30 a.m. he walked onstage.

  He was all arms and had a slight swinging gait. The nylon stocking treatment had done nothing to tamp his mop of curls. His head looked too small for his body, and the expression on his round, boyish face was disarmingly bashful. Smiles broke out among the assembled conservatory students, officials, and ordinary Muscovites.

  Van sat down quietly at the piano. He tried not to look at the jurors, who were seated in front of the stage behind a row of green baize tables. But Rildia Bee had taught him to pay attention to the number and placing of the audience and the length and ambient noise of the room, and to his surprise, he saw that both levels of the hall were almost full.

  He slid his long fingers onto the keys, straightened himself, and froze in position. The audience tensed with him: suddenly the boy was an artist, focusing his body and mind on his instrument. He started with Bach and the suffering tones of the Prelude and Fugue in B-flat Minor from Book I of The Well-Tempered Clavier, which he had learned as a child. The stern, spare sound tolled somberly through the hall. After a round of applause, he followed with the Mozart C Major Sonata, K. 330.

  Mozart makes a pianist naked. There are few notes and no places to hide. The music either has meaning or is just a collection of sounds. Some pianists can play it as children; some never can. Most Russians, Richter included, found its pregnant simplicities temperamentally uncongenial. Van played unconventional Mozart. His tempos were slow, and his tone burnished; his phrasing broad and sculpted, weighing every note. Norman Shetler, who had played on the first day and was watching now, sensed an almost electrical connection between the audience and this young American. A mesmerized Sergei Dorensky thought Van seemed to be talking to the hall and each person in it. When the last short chord came emphatically down, they paused, and then burst out in a tumult of applause. Van stood up to take a bow, revealing his mangy gray sweater, then sat down and waited for the commotion to die away. To his surprise it carried on, and he had to stand up at the piano three more times. The tension broken, now he dared to sneak a look at the jury.

  Next he played four études, by Chopin, Scriabin, Liszt, and Rachmaninoff—the last the piece he had heard swirling at midnight from the hall—which brought more concentrated bursts of applause. No one seemed to care that he fumbled a few times in Liszt’s gallopingly difficult “Mazeppa.”

  The final piece was compulsory: Tchaikovsky’s Theme and Variations in F Major, op. 19, which the audience knew and loved. You could hear the young American’s love, too, and see it. Rocking from the waist into an expansive theme, he arched back from the keys and rolled his head to the ceiling, shaking it slowly as if in wonder, his eyes half-closed in pained ecstasy. Hunched down for an intricate passage, he frowned at his fingers as they flew across the keys. Sending stormy chords crashing around, he tensed and flexed as if he were about to spring off his stool. His playing was ecstatically lyrical, thrillingly Romantic, and symphonic in scale—and tears glistened in ma
ny eyes. In the Marxist-Leninist worldview, Americans were boorish materialists exploited by rapacious Wall Street monopolists and were doomed to be crushed by the engine of history. Next to that diablerie, Van Cliburn looked like an angel, a vulnerable, six-foot-four, mop-haired angel in a plastic wing collar and stringy bow tie. When the last chord stopped echoing, the hall took a collective deep breath and then thundered its approval. The clamor was unabated after Van left the stage, and amid it, two words were heard more and more:

  “Vanya! Vanyusha!”

  The first was a diminutive of Ivan, the second a diminutive of the diminutive, the kind of pet name a mother might whisper to her child.

  Also in the audience was Ella Vlassenko, Iron Lev’s wife. She liked Van’s playing but thought some of it was exaggerated. Still, she couldn’t help seeing that most people were beside themselves—very happy, she thought, that a pianist who wasn’t one of their own was playing well. She began to worry for her husband.

  THE JURY had been given a huge room for its deliberations, with a big table in the center. As the jurors filed in they disposed themselves round it—all except Sviatoslav Richter, who dragged his brooding form to a piano in the far corner. With his chiseled chin, thinning hair brushed forward, and almost comically morose expression, at forty-three Richter cut a striking figure. It was the first time he had been roped into a jury, and he was even less inclined than usual to be complaisant.