Moscow Nights

by Nigel Cliff

  VAN HARDLY had time to read the morning papers, because he was getting ready for his very own ticker tape parade. May 20, 1958, was Van Cliburn Day in New York City.

  Despite the damp weather, there was a carnival atmosphere downtown. The mayor had asked schools and colleges to declare a holiday, and on Beaver Street and Stone Street a thousand junior high school band members and students assembled at 11:30 a.m. alongside a combined band of Boy Scouts and Cubs. The main group formed into four units of two hundred students, each headed by a band, and arrayed themselves in marching order, eight abreast. Mounted police led them into Bowling Green, and shortly after noon the cacophonous cavalcade set off along Lower Broadway. Majorettes twirling batons led the way, page boys drummed, fifers tooted, cheerleaders yelled, and the massed colors of the New York City Fire Department brought up the rear. Two open-topped cars followed. Van perched on the trunk of the first, his legs on the backseat, wearing a dark suit, white shirt, and narrow dark tie. City officials sat at his feet. Bill Schuman and his wife traveled in the second car, with Harvey and Rildia Bee, and members of the press drove alongside in two trucks provided by the Department of Sanitation. As Van glanced up he saw ticker tape twirl down from office buildings draped with banners and flags, and people hanging out of windows thirty and forty stories high, all the way to the skyscrapers’ mist-shrouded tops. On the ground, cheering crowds stood three or four deep, a dozen in places, waving signs reading WELCOME VAN CLIBURN. Some climbed on car roofs to get a better view. The front row consisted almost entirely of girls, and as the car approached, their hands stretched out in a rippling wave of flesh. Van leaned over to touch as many as he could reach. A few girls broke free and dashed up for a handshake or hug. One girl stood on tiptoe for a kiss, and Van planted some of his excitement on her lips. “He’s cuter than Tony Perkins!” another screamed. “You showed them Russians!” older spectators shrieked with pride. A few hollered something about youths needing a haircut; the rest shouted them down. Van smiled and waved.

  The sun broke through and bathed the procession in light. Just above Trinity Church a man ran up: “How does it feel?” he shouted.

  “How does it feel?” Van repeated, gasping, shaking his head, crossing his hands over his heart, and blowing kisses to the world. “I wonder who it’s for.” The only thing that kept him together was Mother’s parting entreaty to be thinking what he would say on the stand.

  The head of the parade arrived in City Hall Park at around 12:30 p.m. A lectern was waiting on the steps, facing VIP tiered seating decorated with bunting and UN flags. The Department of Sanitation Band and the United Nations Chorus were waiting with four hundred more students and the Texas Club of New York. The marchers took their positions, the Fire Department colors arranged themselves behind the rostrum, and the assembled five thousand waited.

  Van climbed out of the car with his mind still a blank. His parents joined him. When he spotted Kondrashin among the waiting dignitaries, he dragged him onto the platform. The band played the national anthem with the crowd singing along, and the United Nations Chorus followed with four selections. Speakers, including the pastor of Calvary Baptist, sang Van’s praises, and New York City mayor Robert F. Wagner presented him with the city’s Scroll for Exceptional and Distinguished Service. They shook hands, and as Van moved in front of the microphone the words finally came. The victory, he declared in a strong, soft voice, did not belong to him but to classical music, a universal language that he hoped the win would help more people speak. “It was a wonderful thing to go to the Soviet Union,” he added, “and I wish you could have been with me and seen the wonderful, heart-warming love and affection given.” At his side, Harvey put an arm round his back: whether in support or warning, it was hard to tell.

  From City Hall a limousine mounting a blaring klaxon took them to the Waldorf-Astoria, with a police escort clearing the way. In the Empire Room five hundred guests had been seated for more than an hour; the more impatient had begun to dip into their halibut flakes “Antoine.” Finally Van strode in, nearly tripping over his flapping sole as the mayor struggled to keep pace and an orchestra, furnished by Local 802 of the Musicians’ Union, struck up the national anthem. When it finished, half the room surged forward to receive hugs from the returning hero, have autographs signed, or simply be in his orbit. Van blew more kisses. On the dais, Rildia Bee smiled graciously while Harvey looked about in disbelief. Bill Schuman spoke of Juilliard’s pride in its now-famous alumnus. Abram Chasins made a speech, allowing his tablemates to check if the silver service was still intact. Rosina Lhévinne received the city’s first annual Van Cliburn Award, in the form of an inscribed vase. The composer Richard Rodgers praised “this young, this very old diplomat.” The mayor toasted Van’s mother and daddy with Georges de Latour Cabernet ’48—Van demurely raised a glass of Vichy water—then toasted Van and presented him with another decoration, the medal of the city. Van shook his head, scattered some kisses about, and rose unsteadily to his feet. Reported The New Yorker, he

  wished all his friends would say an occasional prayer for him to enable him to live up to all that had happened. He knew, he said, that it could have happened to somebody else. “Ah appreciate everything,” he said. “You will never know. Ah love you.” He blew kisses to all, and strode to the piano. A hush fell over the Empire Room, the waiters stopped serving dessert, and Van Cliburn, transported now, played two numbers.

  As a bonus, when he discovered that one of the dignitaries was heading to Moscow that afternoon, he sat down and wrote long introductions to his Soviet friends, including Premier Khrushchev and ex-premier Bulganin, and before handing them over, he read them to the room. Somewhere toward the back was Joyce Flissler, the New York–born violinist who had placed seventh in the violin competition. She had been included at the last minute, and no one paid her the slightest attention—but then, no one had treated her a jot differently since she had returned from Moscow a month earlier. She was fond of Van and admired him, but her claret came in a bitter cup.

  “He’s the Eggheads’ Elvis Presley!” chortled the Sunday Daily News, outdone only by Time, which dubbed Van “Horowitz, Liberace and Presley all rolled into one.”

  “It’s a dream!” Van kept saying. “And if it is, I hope I never wake up.”

  The police estimated that a hundred thousand had cheered Van on, perhaps the most since Charles Lindbergh was rapturously welcomed home thirty-one years earlier. The city had hoped the event would be even bigger, an American Music Day involving all New York’s music students and teachers, but one by one the music schools and university music departments had cried off. Most explained that it was exam week or that they were not equipped for marching, but some publicly aired gripes: they were suspicious of the sudden official interest in their existence, suspected they were being used for political ends, thought it unfair to single out one competition winner when others had been ignored, and found it ripe that the authorities left it to private charity to fund American emissaries and then jumped on the bandwagon when they won. Others, demonstrating why classical music was not more popular, sniffed that an academic procession in caps and gowns would have been all well and good, but a ticker tape parade was undignified for a musician. More than a few schools had not even bothered to respond to the city’s invitation. PARADE FOR PIANIST LAGS, the New York Herald Tribune had headlined six days earlier.

  There was also a nasty whiff of sour grapes that followed Van round. More than one prominent pianist was insanely jealous of his fame: “I could have gone to Moscow, too,” one repeatedly scoffed. Another rival took the time and trouble to mail a “shockingly scurrilous and green-eyed poem” to thousands of musicians, alleging that the Tchaikovsky Competition had been rigged. The author of the low doggerel was of course anonymous, but in the catty music world, this was far from the only intimation that the Russians had “arranged” Van’s victory as a propaganda stunt. Some of the claims were not so much paranoid as batty, including a tip-off received by the F
BI, which was continuing to keep tabs on Van, from an informant who had been in the Soviet Union during the competition. In a report marked TOP SECRET, an agent noted that the source “advised she had watched the concert on television and the director of the concert was only a third-rate conductor. The source expressed the opinion the reason a third-rate conductor had appeared could be that the director was a homosexual and Cliburn must be one also. The source further advised she considered another contestant much better than Cliburn and was of the opinion Cliburn must have been given the prize for some purpose of the Russians.”

  THE DAY after the parade, Wednesday, the Van Cliburn Show moved on to Philadelphia. Van’s performance at the Academy of Music was cheered so loudly that he repeated the last two movements of the Tchaikovsky, and as his Cadillac finally pulled away hours later, screaming groupies gave chase and tore off one of the door handles. The next day, he disrupted the sedate Wanamaker’s department store when he tried to buy a few new clothes. “Van Cliburn is here!” girls shrieked. “God bless you, son!” called an old man on an escalator, leaning dangerously over: “Bless you always for what you did for America!” At 2:00 a.m. on Friday, the cavalcade of pianist, parents, manager, press agent, conductor, and reporters arrived in Washington, DC, and Van, Liz Winston, and the chauffeur went looking for hamburgers and coffee. At an all-night snack bar, a nightclub pianist who had just come off duty slid into the booth and regaled Van with his life story. Van listened intently, chipping in to ask for more details, and it was nearly dawn when the Cliburn contingent wandered back to the hotel to catch a few hours’ sleep before setting out for the White House.

  An invitation to the Executive Mansion was a rare honor for an American artist of any age, let alone one who was unknown only a few weeks earlier. Van’s immense popularity had made such a visit politically desirable, and though the government had declined to sponsor his travel abroad, Eisenhower had invested a good deal of political capital in cultural exchange programs. Yet the invitation had been for Van alone, not his parents, and certainly not for the Soviet conductor who was now standing alongside them in the Oval Office. Kondrashin good-naturedly passed on his best wishes on behalf of the Soviet people, thus becoming the first private Soviet citizen to meet the American president. Texas-born Ike cordially showed off his family snaps and posed for photographs, but he explained that his helicopter was waiting to take him to his Gettysburg farm and he would unfortunately miss the evening’s concert at Constitution Hall. So would Mamie, who had already left for the weekend, and Vice President Richard Nixon, who was otherwise engaged. Still, Ike said, he was sure the concerts were a breeze for Van “after coming out on top in that kind of ordeal over there.”

  The chat lasted twelve minutes, after which the visitors were escorted out and the new Afghan ambassador was ushered in. At a press conference, during which Van ducked more loaded questions about his opinion of the Soviet Union, one reporter asked if the president had congratulated him on winning the contest. “Yes, I think so,” he answered carefully. “I think he did it elliptically, if nothing else.” Another pointedly inquired whether Khrushchev had attended his concerts, and taking the bait, Van replied that he was very greatly disappointed not to have the chance to play for Ike.

  Culture enjoyed an official status in the Soviet Union that it had never had in America. Yet Eisenhower’s coolness could also be ascribed to what looked very much like presumptuousness on Van’s part. Ike’s press secretary had doubtless passed on J. Edgar Hoover’s intelligence that, while in Moscow, Van had spoken dismissively about meeting the president; perhaps it was Ike himself who decided to “play it very cautiously.” Then the young pianist had insisted on turning up with his Soviet friend in tow. Now he had come very near rebuking the president for not attending his concert, which could only increase the administration’s caution in dealing with the headstrong young man. Lyndon B. Johnson, the Senate majority leader, had also seen the FBI report, which perhaps explained why he and his fellow Texas senator, Ralph Yarborough, also contrived to be out of town that Friday. Nor was there any mark of recognition from the powerful Texas State Society, though some members of the Texas delegation held a luncheon in the Senate Dining Room and presented Van and Kondrashin with gold cuff links enameled with the opening phrase of Tchaikovsky’s First.

  The official aloofness left the stage to the Soviets. That night, as a society audience filled Constitution Hall, the Cliburns pointedly took their seats in the box of Smiling Mike Menshikov, the Soviet ambassador, who had already sent a gargantuan basket of flowers backstage. Afterward the Soviet embassy in Washington hosted a gourmet supper for fifty guests, with Van and Kondrashin at the top of the horseshoe table and the first-desk members of the orchestra ranged on either side. Glasses were set for champagne, brandy, wines, and vodka, and Smiling Mike began toasting Van, Van’s parents, and Kondrashin, the “number two papa of Van Cliburn.” Menshikov could match any Bolshevik in verbosity. When he had presented his credentials that February, the president cordially asked about his background. His answer, the State Department memorandum recorded, ran “through his entire employment record” and “consumed 15 minutes of the 33 minute appointment.” Three weeks later Menshikov contrived another lengthy meeting with Eisenhower, who was forced to explain that if he personally heard out all eighty ambassadors he would have no time to run the country. As soon as he could, Van sprang at the piano and played into the small hours. Between the music and the vodka, the normally somber embassy swam with warmth and camaraderie and light.

  The next morning, General Robert Cutler, the president’s national security adviser, asked Pat Coyne, an FBI veteran on the NSC’s intelligence staff, to call the agency and find out what it had in its files on Van Cliburn and Kirill Kondrashin. “According to Coyne,” noted J. Edgar Hoover’s assistant A. H. Belmont, “Cutler advised that following the ovation that Cliburn received at his concert in Constitution Hall here last Friday, Cliburn gave Kondrashin two ‘European kisses’ and then kissed him on the lips.” The inference was clearly that such unhealthy behavior might be a sign of unpatriotically effete tendencies.

  • 13 •

  “He’s Better Than Elvis by Far!”

  BACK IN New York, Van was too keyed up to sleep, and he kept Liz Winston and Bill Judd talking into the early hours. Harvey, who didn’t much like the big-city habits his son had picked up, came in rubbing his eyes. “You’ve got to let this poor boy have some sleep,” he scolded them. They would have been only too glad: Liz had lost thirteen pounds in the nine days since Van’s return; Bill, eight. Van himself had grown so thin that he had had his clothes taken in. But he pulled the two friends back: “Oh please,” he implored. “Please don’t go. Not yet. Let’s have just another cigarette.” They were still talking at dawn.

  He had coasted on nerves through parades and speeches and concerts played under pressure that few musicians had ever experienced. Acting as if nothing had changed was his way of coping, but the next day the cracks began to show. That night, he was to appear on The Steve Allen Show, and during a rehearsal, the host held up a dummy sleeve of Van’s yet-to-be-recorded first album, mocked up with a color photograph taken in the Soviet Union.

  “What is that you’re holding?” Van burst out. “This is unauthorized. I never authorized this.” Color was for pop sensations, not serious musicians, who on album covers remained as black-and-white as piano keys and concert garb. He grabbed the sleeve, ripped it to pieces, and stormed off to his dressing room, slamming the door. A soberer album cover was quickly concocted, while Allen rehearsed his next guest, the great Louis Armstrong, and Van emerged his usual self in time to play the last movement of the Tchaikovsky and banter gamely. His fee was three thousand dollars, thirty times the sum he had received the previous time, but there was no complaint about that or his tantrum. He had the package: talent, youth, congeniality, fame, and photogenic looks, his rapt absorption especially striking in close-up.

  At the Pierre, Van suddenly stood
up at midnight. “I’m going back to my apartment to practice,” he declared drastically. “I can’t go on like this. Do you know, I haven’t really worked in two months? I’ve just been playing, playing, playing.” He grabbed his coat, ran out the door, and returned at 5:00 a.m., again too wired to sleep. But on May 26 he was back in remarkable form for a reprise of his program at Carnegie Hall. “A great event in the history of music in America is taking place tonight,” intoned the announcer on WQXR, which broadcast the concert in full. At the beginning of the second half, Van brought on Kondrashin and turned to the audience. “I do hope you will forgive me,” he politely drawled, “for departing from concert procedure and decorum to express one thought of appreciation to you for being so very kind to me.” It came across as a charming mark of youthful gregariousness and the novelty of the occasion, though some may have felt he was taking his new role as a public figure too seriously. Afterward, he introduced Mayor Wagner, who expatiated on Van’s impact in the worlds of music and international relations; then Van played the Rachmaninoff, to another raucous ovation. With cheers still echoing in their ears the Cliburns entertained a throng of guests until 3:00 a.m., when Abram Chasins noticed they had been too busy being hosts to eat, and proposed a trip to Reuben’s. “Y’all go along,” Harvey said with a grimace. “I’m daid.” Van, Rildia Bee, and the others traipsed down the street. Cabdrivers honked and waved. Cops walked over to slap Van on the back, doormen stepped out to pump his hand, and passersby thanked him “for doing what you did for us over there.” Small shrieks met their entrance to the restaurant. As they made their way to their table, a drunk staggered up to shake the hero’s hand and then slid to the floor. As the man babbled his congratulations, Van gently lifted him up and pulled up a chair. Putting an arm round him, he asked, “Do you really mean it? Did I do that much?”