Read Moscow Nights: The Van Cliburn Story-How One Man and His Piano Transformed the Cold War Online

Authors: Nigel Cliff

Tags: #Biography & Autobiography, #Composers & Musicians, #Historical, #Political

Moscow Nights: The Van Cliburn Story-How One Man and His Piano Transformed the Cold War (63 page)

BOOK: Moscow Nights: The Van Cliburn Story-How One Man and His Piano Transformed the Cold War

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31

During three summers:
Van attended the Juilliard School in the summers of 1947, 1948 (studying with Ernest Hutcheson), and 1951 (studying with Carl Friedberg).

33

gold medals:
Josef graduated top of his piano class, ahead of his classmates Alexander Scriabin and Sergei Rachmaninoff, who won the even more prestigious Great Gold Medal for composition.

35

five-room apartment:
The description and the following information about Van’s life with the Spicers are taken from SH.

35

“You can’t love music enough”:
“All-American Virtuoso.”

35

a high but unspectacular 119:
TM1 gives Van’s academic credentials.

36

Leontyne Price:
Interview by Peter Rosen, Reels 38 and 39,
Van Cliburn—Concert Pianist
elements, VCA. This vital collection includes many detailed interviews for Rosen’s 1994 documentary, which was originally broadcast on the A&E Network’s
Biography
.

36

Mrs. Leo Satterwhite Allen:
VC
, 18.

36

“Boy, isn’t it wonderful”:
Mark Schubart, quoted in SH.

37

Steinway Hall:
At 113 West Fifty-Seventh Street; when the building was sold to Manhattan Life Insurance Company, the number was changed to 111.

38

“
Well
, far be it from
me
to say”:
Robert White, interview with the author, February 28, 2015.

38

a wealthy lady:
TM2.

39

“Kremlin’s ultimate intentions”:
William L. Laurence, quoted in Paul Boyer,
By the Bomb’s Early Light: American Thought and Culture at the Dawn of the Atomic Age
(New York: Pantheon, 1985), 340. Born in Lithuania, Laurence was the official historian of the Manhattan Project.

39

Secret plans:
Secret report NSC-68, issued April 14, 1950, President’s Secretary’s File, Truman Papers, Truman Library.

39

Third World War:
Code-named “Operation Dropshot”; first circulated in 1949.

39

“Every effort will be made”:
Boyer,
By the Bomb’s Early Light
, 323.

39

How to Survive an Atomic Bomb
:
Published in New York by Bantam, 1950. The author, Richard Gerstell, was billed as a consultant with the Civil Defense Office.

40

“leaving only the tower”:
Boyer,
By the Bomb’s Early Light
, 320.

40

“fluorescence which occurs around U-235”:
Ibid., 110.

40

“a pellet of atomic energy”:
Ibid., 112.

40

“the entire world a moister, warmer climate”:
Ibid., 111.

40

“generally to tidy up”:
S. Chase,
The Nation
, December 22, 1945.

40

“If an atomic-powered taxi”:
Boyer,
By the Bomb’s Early Light
, 115.

40

Science Digest . . . Scientific American
:
Ibid., 115–16.

40

Inside Room 412:
My account of Rosina at Juilliard draws on Dowis, “Rosina: A Memoir”;
The Legacy of Rosina Lhévinne
, film dir. Salome Ramras Arkatov, 2003, DVD, Kultur, 2011; and my interviews with Van’s contemporaries Martin Canin and Howard Aibel, conducted September 26 and October 16, 2014, respectively. The following quotations are from Dowis.

42

“Very talented, quick, not
very
accurate”:
Folder 10, Box 27, RLP.

42

with great joy:
Joseph W. Polisi, “The Broad Palette of Van Cliburn’s Life,”
Juilliard Journal
, April 2013. “He is a great joy to work with . . . [possessing a] most unusual virtuoso talent [but] with it shows remarkable sensitivity,” Rosina wrote in a teacher report.

42

“It’s too beautiful”:
Wallace,
Century of Music-Making
, 271.

42

earned him three hundred dollars:
PFJA.

42

six-hundred-dollar Juilliard grant:
Ibid. The grant was in the name of Olga Samaroff.

42

“Harvey Levan”:
Ibid.

43

“Excellent talent”:
Folder 2, Box 27, RLP.

43

“But Tchaikovsky”:
Dowis, “Rosina: A Memoir,” 375.

44

“Well, we don’t really”:
Josef Raeiff, quoted in
VC
, 61.

44

played the concerto:
On January 23, 1953.

44

graded him “Excellent”:
Folder 11, Box 27, RLP.

44

his own showcase:
VC
, 55.

45

double protection:
Though the change was unusually dramatic, there were precedents: the prominent British pianist, conductor, and composer Ethel Leginska (1886–1970) was born Ethel Liggins in Hull, Yorkshire, while the British pianist Marguérite de Pachmann (1865–1952) was born Maggie Okey in Australia.

3: THE SUCCESSOR

47

dusk on March 1, 1953:
My account of Stalin’s death is based primarily on the firsthand account of the guard Pavel Lozgachev in Edward Radzinsky,
Stalin
, trans. H. T. Willetts (New York: Doubleday, 1996), 549–60. Also used were
KM
, 145–52; Simon Sebag Montefiore,
Stalin: The Court of the Red Tsar
(London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1993), 564–77; Zhores A. Medvedev and Roy A. Medvedev,
The Unknown Stalin
, trans. Ellen Dahrendorf (London: I. B. Tauris, 2003), 1–33; Svetlana Alliluyeva,
Twenty Letters to a Friend
(New York: Harper and Row, 1967); Andrei Gromyko,
Memoirs
, trans. Harold Shukman (New York: Doubleday, 1989), 103; Felix Chuev,
Molotov Remembers
(Chicago: Ivan R. Dee, 1993), 236–37. The accounts often conflict: for instance Khrushchev says he arrived at Stalin’s dacha early in the morning on March 2 with Malenkov, Beria, and Bulganin, whereas Lozgachev says only the first two showed up and that Khrushchev arrived four hours later.

48

“Beat them . . . into powder”:
Montefiore,
Stalin
, 558.

48

“It has been established”:
Vadim J. Birstein,
The Perversion of Knowledge: The True Story of Soviet Science
(Cambridge, MA: Westview, 2001), 64. The services named were those of America and Britain.

48

“feverishly preparing”:
Pravda
, January 13, 1958, quoted in Jussi M. Hanhimäki and Odd Arne Westad, eds.,
The Cold War: A History in Documents and Eyewitness Accounts
(New York: Oxford University Press, 2003), 427.

48

head of the secret police:
The Soviet security service was known as the MGB, or Ministry for State Security, from 1946 to 1954, when it was replaced with the KGB, the Committee for State Security.