Moscow Nights

by Nigel Cliff

  The unenviable task of managing Richter fell to his fellow Odessan Emil Gilels, who was far from a detached observer. The younger man by nearly two years, the prickly Gilels resented Richter’s first rank and often sulked around him. Worse still was the obvious collusion between Richter and their teacher, Heinrich Neuhaus. Now a few days shy of his seventieth birthday, Neuhaus was like a father to Richter; as a young man, Richter had often slept under the piano in Neuhaus’s tiny living room, and the two instinctively understood each other. Both were of German extraction and had been suspected of spying during the war; Neuhaus was carted off to the Lubyanka and almost certain death, but his students dangerously appealed to Stalin, and instead he was sent into exile. Gilels was convinced that Neuhaus preferred Richter’s playing to his and had deliberately set Richter up in opposition to him, a suspicion that assumed such paranoid proportions that Gilels wrote to Neuhaus and the newspapers denying he had ever been his student. To Gilels, their joint presence was a torment, which only grew worse when the pair turned up late several times during the competition, completely missing one morning session. Nor were these the only tensions in the room. Neuhaus was no admirer of the composer Dmitri Kabalevsky, whom he termed the “poor man’s Prokofiev.” Richter, outdoing him, called Kabalevsky “deeply unpleasant” and declared that it had never occurred to him to play his “threadbare music.” Kabalevsky had been quick to turn his back on Shostakovich when he was denounced at the Union of Soviet Composers, with which he was heavily involved. Just now he and its first secretary, Tikhon Khrennikov, an unreconstructed Stalinist who was also on the organizing committee of the competition, had ganged up on the composer Nikita Bogoslovsky for the crime of inviting a diplomat to a comedy soiree at the Central House of Art Workers without proper authorization, and despite extracting a groveling letter, they had expelled him from the Composers’ Union.

  Immediately the judges began to argue, and the main subject was Van Cliburn. His Mozart was deeply unorthodox, and while some judges found his clear, pure lyricism charmingly generous, others dismissed it as tasteless and naive. Lev Oborin, inscrutable and composed, wanted to know why the young American swayed about the whole time and kept gazing toward the ceiling. “I don’t like this,” he frowned. “Lyova, you don’t get it,” retorted Alexander Goldenweiser, at eighty-three the leonine dean of Russian pianists: “He looks up because he is speaking with God.”

  Richter stood restlessly by the piano, wearing a pained expression. When the others passed their slips across the table, he handed his down the room. He was convinced that Van had played miles better than the others and gave him the full twenty-five points, as did another Soviet judge and a Bulgarian. Gilels and two others gave Van twenty-four. The lowest marks came from the Frenchman Armand de Gontaut Biron and the Portuguese pianist José Carlos de Sequeira Costa, at twenty-eight, much the youngest judge; both gave Van eighteen. Liu Shikun was close behind, with marks ranging from twenty-four to eighteen, and running a close third was Toyoaki Matsuura of Japan, whose imperturbably aristocratic demeanor belied a fiery temperament and a frenetic, impulsive style that departed by some distance from composers’ intentions but delighted the audience. Richter gave many of the others scores as low as seven.

  Van had to wait two days before the results were announced, at 10:00 p.m. Friday in the conservatory’s White Hall. Twenty competitors went forward. Norman Shetler was not among them; he did get to meet his hero Richter and present the gift he had brought for him, the Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau recording of the Schumann Dichterliebe, but discovered that Richter never took students. Nor was Liu Shikun’s countrywoman Gu Shengying. The Australian who had bragged about his Stradivarius was sent packing. So were two pianists who appeared to have arrived at the Tchaikovsky Competition by accident and had given performances varying from bizarre to ridiculous. One, from South America, played all his pieces nonstop with no pauses in between—whether out of nerves or ignorance of the conventions, no one could say.

  To grumbles from the tired jurors, the second round began at nine thirty sharp the following morning. In the afternoon it was Liu Shikun’s turn, and a packed audience admiringly applauded the nineteen-year-old sensation. Van’s slot was not until Monday, three days later. That meant more time to practice, now with his Russian admirers crowding in to the last note. Naum Shtarkman gazed at Van with puppy eyes; he had fallen madly in love and admitted as much to Norman Shetler, who was also around Van a lot, now that he had time on his hands.

  With the fuss surrounding the competition mounting daily, even the losers were treated like rock stars. The one sticky moment, when an interpreter lost her temper with her charge and railed against the misconceptions “you Westerners” had about Soviet people, stood out for its rarity. That Saturday, the Central House of Literary Workers hosted a friendly get-together with Soviet writers; Joyce Flissler attended, looking American with her heavy lipstick and eyeliner. There was also a visit to the nearby town of Babushkin, where contestants toured the Soviet Institute of Transport Construction and were welcomed by the director and locals with baskets of flowers and presents. Sunday there were no heats, and excursions to theaters and concert halls were laid on for everyone. Most popular was an outing to Tchaikovsky’s house at Klin, two hours’ drive from Moscow through forests of white birch, followed by a reception organized by the Ministry of Culture and the Executive Committee of the Klin Town Council of Working People’s Deputies. Alternatives included heavily chaperoned meetings with students from Moscow universities and a soiree organized by the All-Russia Theatrical Society, during which laureates of the violin competition played in front of projected clips from Charlie Chaplin movies. Since it was Easter Sunday back home, Van attended a Russian Orthodox service, its ancient liturgy and ceremony a world apart from the relaxed Baptists with their shirtsleeved ministers. He prayed for peace of mind and the strength to continue, whatever was meant for him.

  At the conservatory a bespectacled young man with thinning hair introduced himself: “Hello, I’m Slava Rostropovich.” Van was taken aback by the young man’s simplicity; ever since he was a boy, he had read about the great cellist to whom Prokofiev and Shostakovich dedicated their works. “In the next three days before the next stage,” Rostropovich said, “maybe you’d like to have dinner with us. Let me invite you to my place and introduce you to my wife.” To Van’s shock and delight, she turned out to be the great soprano Galina Vishnevskaya. The three talked about opera and piano, which Rostropovich also played. Van told them about his mother and her studies with Arthur Friedheim. Rostropovich reminded Van of Chopin’s saying that a piano is not ten fingers but ten beautiful voices. They had so many interests and views in common that Van felt like a younger relative visiting his family; he said so to his hosts, and they decided to adopt him.

  The competition press officers hovered around, interviewing the contestants and asking their views on the Soviet Union. Van diplomatically stuck to music. “I have walked where Tchaikovsky, Rachmaninoff, Scriabin and other great musicians have walked,” he dictated. “I am touched by the cordial reception that was given to me. It is a great pleasure to play for the Russians who are such fine lovers of music. The friendliness of the audience inspired me, and one felt as if one was playing better than usual. This is my first trip outside the United States, and I am very happy to be in the homeland of wonderful Russian composers for whose work I have great respect.”

  Everywhere he went, people recognized him. Bolder Muscovites began gathering outside his hotel; others came up to him in the street and seemed excited to talk to him. The whole city was talking about the tall, handsome young Texan with the charming manners and the romantic style of playing. Across the nation, millions tuned in to a daily radio program called Diary of the Competition and followed Van’s story, weighing up his chances against those of his chief rivals. News of a brilliant American pupil of the legendary Rosina Lhévinne reached the ears of Vladimir Ashkenazy, who decided to go listen for himself. He was lucky to hav
e the chance. “No tickets left,” the box office prodavshchitsa told callers asking for tickets to the Monday sessions. “Kleeburn is playing.” It was a delightful surprise that an American could so enchant Russian ears. Still, no one really thought he could win.

  • 8 •

  “Vanya, Vanyusha!”

  MOSCOW WAS a moody city, full of character, mysterious and exotic. Built atop the fissure between two worlds, the seat of a vast multiethnic empire, it had grown up piecemeal, with buildings of different eras and ranks jumbled together. Abandoned for two centuries as the czarist capital, it had triumphantly reemerged as the command center of international communism. Stalin had plowed under narrow medieval streets to create avenues wide enough to land a plane, surpassing invaders and fire in sweeping aside the past. His magnificently pompous high-rises, testaments to the aspirations of Soviet communism even as they mocked its egalitarianism, were towering proof of a new imperium. Yet a more colorful Moscow still peeked out between the monumental grayness: pastel mansions and gingerbread cottages, domes and bell towers, elegant boulevards and unexpected islands of greenery.

  As with its architecture, so the city’s life was an odd blend of old and new. Gaunt men silently skated through the halls of public buildings, waxing the floors with bristle brushes strapped to their bare feet. In the hotel laundry room, the man who pressed the clothes dampened them with a squirt of water from his mouth. Outside, a platoon of old ladies raked the square with bundles of twigs tied to broom handles. Policemen twirled batons at major intersections to direct trickles of traffic, mainly flatbed trucks and Victory taxis resembling cut-down versions of 1939 Chevrolets. The sidewalks were crowded and clean, beggars almost nonexistent. Vendors walked round in the freezing cold with trays of ice-cream cones, but on Red Square hundreds lined up at GUM, the State Department Store, to buy eggs. Nearby, like a sick secret policeman’s joke, a vast branch of the department store Children’s World had risen in the baleful shadow of the Lubyanka prison. A marble-lined cavern of toys intended to deliver on Khrushchev’s promise of increased consumer choice, the store was permanently encircled by parents waiting in line for scarce children’s clothes.

  That week, the official newspapers were full of the progress of the Red Queen. Elisabeth of the Belgians traveled in a cortege like a czarina as she visited the Kremlin, the Metro, the “Red October” confectionary factory, Lenin’s mausoleum and his museum in Gorki, and the Bolshoi and its ballet school. Cameramen filmed her every step, and the contestants were briefly left alone to explore the city, supervised of course. Van dipped his head into the impossibly grand Metro at Mayakovskaya station, with its Art Deco columns and ceiling mosaics. He went to art galleries and took walks along the Moscow River with his interpreter, Henrietta, and his new Soviet friends. Everyone seemed to have a tragic story. Eddik Miansarov, the handsome young pianist who had knocked on Van’s door, had followed his childhood sweetheart, Tamara, to the conservatory and married her, but because of the accommodation shortage, they had been forced to stay in their bunks at the student hostel, he on the second floor, she on the fourth. Tamara soon realized that Eddik was more wedded to his music than to her: “If you have a baby, I’m gone!” he threatened not long after the wedding. Shortly afterward, his roommate shot himself, and as the scandal spread across Moscow, it was revealed that he and Eddik had been experimenting with creativity-enhancing drugs. Eddik begged the now-pregnant Tamara to persuade the rector not to expel him, and instead he was sent off to a clinic. The marriage did not last.

  The companionship was welcome, because politics had finally caught up with Van. After talking to his fellow foreign contestants, he had become convinced that a Westerner could not win the competition. His nose had started to bleed again, he was too anxious to sleep, and once again he had been given the first morning slot. He asked for some sleeping pills, and whatever was in them knocked him out flat. He woke up mercifully refreshed, plastered down his curls with hair cream, and headed back to the hall for the second round.

  OVERNIGHT THE temperature had stayed above freezing for the first time that winter. The first thaw was turning the snow to slyakot, the famous black sludge that made sidewalks an obstacle course and slowly laid bare all manner of things buried during the winter. Inside the hall every seat was taken, and an expectant hush settled before Van emerged. Playing in the first round had turned out to be an advantage: as well as allowing him to show off his range, it had given him a head start with the public.

  He had an hour to play his way into the finals, and though he gave no sign of it as he sat down, afterward he told everyone that he thought his heart might stop. He steadied himself and began with the technically tricky Prelude and Fugue in G-sharp Minor by Sergei Taneyev. The piece had been recommended by the New York Philharmonic’s music director, Dimitri Mitropoulos, and was well chosen: Taneyev had been the first winner of the conservatory’s Great Gold Medal and later its director. Van pulled the piece off and then played another obligatory work of Tchaikovsky’s, the first movement of his Sonata in G Major—not very securely, he thought. It was all becoming a blur when Chopin’s Fantaisie in F Minor brought the audience to its feet.

  The next piece was his old favorite, Liszt’s Twelfth Hungarian Rhapsody. To the audience it was almost unrecognizable in the American’s hands. Its folk themes came free and poetic as songs, sending up vivid images of rural villages and revealing unexpected depths: now reserved and stern, now dramatic and impulsive, now dashing and inflamed, as if he had somehow penetrated the essence of Hungary and was unfurling its national epic. His fingers stirred feelings latent in Russian breasts during the strict Soviet decades; memories of the golden age of Russian piano playing with its sweep and its passions, its rich gorgeousness and its forceful personality. Last, he played the fugue finale of Samuel Barber’s virtuosic Piano Sonata, which highlighted something else: though his rhythms were rock solid, he had an uncanny way of making a phrase seem improvised. The applause lasted for nearly a quarter of an hour, and by the end, even members of the jury were applauding.

  Yet the big beasts who had won first prizes were still to come. Eddik Miansarov played straight after Van and was inspired by his estranged wife’s presence in the audience. Naum Shtarkman’s turn came the next day. Van listened to him play Schumann and Prokofiev and discovered a soft, Romantic pianist in the Chopin mold, with a pearlescent technique. He told the press officers that he fervently wished Naum could play one day in America.

  Finally, on Tuesday evening, it was Lev Vlassenko’s turn. For once Lev took a taxi to the conservatory, and no sooner had he given the address than the driver began talking about the competition. “Well, how’s that long one getting on?” he asked, referring to Van. In the Great Hall, Vlassenko’s teacher, Jacob Flier, hid behind the organ, furiously smoking, though he had just given it up, nervous that his best student might implode. Sometimes he could tell from the way Lev came onstage and walked to the piano that something was wrong.

  The favorite stepped out, pale in his dinner jacket and forcing a smile as he turned to the audience, making Flier’s heart jump. Yet the weeks of seclusion and the months of obsessive concentration had paid off. Vlassenko’s playing was brilliant and flawless, the epitome of the fearsomely virtuosic Soviet pianist. Not for nothing did one Western musician despair that behind the Iron Curtain “they had nothing but golden monsters with twenty-four fingers.”

  Ella was there to cheer him on. She was pleased, but she had also watched Van a second time, and now she had a new cause for concern. Outrageous gossip had reached her ears about Lev’s background. His family had long concealed their roots in the nobility and czarist military, hiding papers, portraits, and medals in their cellar back in Georgia. But that was not at issue. “Is it true that Lev Vlassenko is Khrushchev’s nephew?” Ella was asked, to her astonishment, and suddenly she realized the suggestion of nepotism was a thinly veiled threat. Rumors were rife that the competition was a stitch-up; the word was that a poster had alread
y been printed announcing government protégé Lev Vlassenko as winner of the first prize.

  MARK SCHUBART had now arrived in Moscow, his State Department expense forms at the ready, pretending, as instructed, that he was present in a private capacity. On his first evening, he attended a reception given by Richard Davis, counselor at the American embassy, and found Van the center of attention. Schubart asked some musicians what had happened, and they told him that “Vanya” was the toast of Moscow. Schubart immediately set out to track down Max Frankel, the young Moscow correspondent of the New York Times, to tip him off.

  “Is this kid really so phenomenal, or is this just another case of Frank Sinatra bobby soxers?” the owlish Frankel skeptically asked, his serious glasses and steady expression belying his twenty-seven years.

  “No, he’s a hell of a musician,” Schubart assured him. “He’s well in line to win this thing, if the Russians ever let him.”

  Frankel scented a scoop and wangled himself a pass for the finals. American ambassador Llewellyn Thompson also decided to attend. A diplomat from a modest Colorado Baptist background who was universally known as “Tommy,” Thompson had fully intended to stay away. With the sense of inevitability that infected all Western diplomats in Moscow, even one just a year into his post, the soft-spoken Thompson had explained that he was “tired of coming in second or third against the Russians.”

  The next day, Schubart took himself to the conservatory and caught some of the last semifinalists, including Danny Pollack, who had chosen the same Barber concerto as Van and played it with scrupulous finesse. Afterward the competition press people got hold of the Juilliard dean, who made a big play of Rosina Lhévinne’s renown as the school’s leading teacher. By the time he was through it was almost midnight, and he was trying to leave when Van emerged from his studio. “Come on, you’ve got to hear me,” he said, and dragged Schubart in to listen to Kabalevsky’s “Rondo,” the piece written specially for the finals. Van played it through, and then played it another three times. “He would have played all night,” Schubart said, “if I’d let him.”