Moscow Nights: The Van Cliburn Story-How One Man and His Piano Transformed the Cold War (64 page)

55
  
“Our father is dead”:
Vladimir Ashkenazy, quoted in Stuart Jeffries, “Back in the USSR,”
Guardian
, November 8, 2002.

55
  
Sviatoslav Richter:
For this episode, see Richter’s recollections in Bruno Monsaingeon,
Sviatoslav Richter: Notebooks and Conversations
(London: Faber and Faber, 2001), 4–6, and in Bruno Monsaingeon’s 1998 film
Richter, the Enigma
.

55
  
two thousand died:
David Mayers,
The Ambassadors and America’s Soviet Policy
(New York: Oxford University Press, 1995), 191.

56
  
trumped-up charges:
A military panel of the Supreme Court of the USSR rehabilitated Teofil Rikhter in 1962.

57
  
telephone number or apartment number:
Paul Moor, “Sviatoslav Richter: Sequestered Genius,”
High Fidelity
8, no. 10 (October 1958): 49–50.

57
  
plastic lobster:
Monsaingeon,
Sviatoslav Richter
, 141.

58
  
“And what a cruel—tragic—coincidence:”
Simon Morrison,
Lina and Serge: The Love and Wars of Lina Prokofiev
(Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2013), 271. Lina would be released in 1956, the year of Khrushchev’s Secret Speech.

60
  “
I did him in”:
Chuev,
Molotov Remembers
, 237. Or so Molotov claimed; like the others, he had an interest in justifying Beria’s execution.

60
  
underage girls:
By one count, Beria had 760 mistresses, and for at least a few, his clammy embrace was the kiss of death. Larissa Vasilieva,
Kremlin Wives: The Secret Lives of the Women Behind the Kremlin Walls—From Lenin to Gorbachev
, trans. Cathy Porter (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1994), 185; Martin Sixsmith,
Russia: A 1,000-Year Chronicle of the Wild East
(London: BBC, 2011), 396.

60
  
“We wiped our noses”:
KR
, 266.

60
  
“Beria is getting his knives ready” . . . “What steps can we take”:
KM
, 189.

61
  
meeting of the Presidium:
Khrushchev’s account of the events (
KM
, 189–200) was for a long time the only source. Records subsequently came to light that prove it to be selective and occasionally misleading. Mark Kramer presents the evidence in “Leadership Succession and Political Violence in the USSR Following Stalin’s Death,” in
Political Violence: Belief, Behavior, and Legitimation
, ed. Paul Hollander (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2008), 69–92.

61
  
“flung himself about the courtroom”:
General Ivan Konev, the presiding judge at the trial, quoted in Tzouliadis,
Forsaken
, 313.

61
  
got drunk and beat up the local militiaman:
Harrison E. Salisbury, “Russia Re-Viewed: Life of a Soviet Common Man Is a Constant Struggle,”
NYT
, September 24, 1954.

62
  
“not especially bright”:
Mayers,
The Ambassadors
, 199.

62
  
“rumbustious, impetuous . . . words of one syllable”:
William Hayter,
A Double Life: The Memoirs of Sir William Hayter
(London: Penguin, 1974), 114.

62
  
“For so long”:
Olga Ivinskaya,
A Captive of Time: My Years with Pasternak
, trans. Max Hayward (London: Collins, 1978), 142.

4: VAN CLIBURN DAYS

63
  
Rosemary Butts:
Tom Martin interviewed her; see TM1. She was then Mrs. Corwin C. Reeves, wife of a Texas Tech geology professor.

63
  
fifteen hundred East Texans:
VCL
, 54–55.

64
  
check for six hundred dollars:
TM1.

64
  
“East Texas Days”:
On November 17 and 18, 1953. Pericles Alexander, “‘East Texas Days’ Named for Cliburn,”
ST
, November 13, 1953; “Cliburn to Receive Honor,”
KNH
, November 16, 1953.

64
  
“seemed barely able”:
VCL
, 52.

64
  
“After all . . . Texans are dumb”:
Mark Schubart, quoted in SH.

65
  
“I’ve never done this” . . . “hearing
about
him”:
VCL
, 58.

65
  
Van was swept away:
Harlow Robinson,
The Last Impresario: The Life, Times, and Legacy of Sol Hurok
(New York: Viking, 1994), 333.

65
  
overtures to Hurok:
In “American Sputnik,”
Time
, April 28, 1958, Van revealed (probably not expecting it to be printed) that Hurok had passed him up. While still at Juilliard, he was confident enough to enter Hurok’s name as his manager on his Placement File.

65
  
“How good” . . . “even
he
knows”:
VCL
, 59.

66
  
Rosalie Leventritt:
Gary Graffman provides a winning portrait of the belle of New York music in
I Really Should Be Practicing
(Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1981), 147–49.

66
  
“He’s going to win”:
Gary and Naomi Graffman, interview with the author, August 21, 2014. Except where indicated, my interview is the source for the following quotations from the Graffmans.

67
  
Abram Chasins:
The former pianist and composer entertainingly recounts the episode in
VCL
, 24–27. The competition was held in March 1954; unaccountably, Chasins places it in the fall.

67
  
“You won’t forget to pray for me”:
Ibid., 60.

68
  
“He really loves music”:
Ibid., 26.

68
  
“May I explain”:
Ibid.

68
  
“Would y’all mahnd”:
Graffman,
I Really Should Be Practicing
, 150.

68
  
Van went home to the Spicers’:
The following scenes are drawn from SH;
VCL
, 61–62; Wallace,
Century of Music-Making
, 271.

69
  
Juilliard diploma recital:
The original program is in VCJA.

69
  
“My best love to you, darling”:
Van Cliburn to Rosina Lhévinne, January 13, 1954, Folder 20, Box 2, RLP.

69
  
“I won’t even try”:
Van Cliburn to Rosina Lhévinne, June 16, 1955, Folder 20, Box 2, RLP.

70
  
“Most promising student I have had”:
Folder 10, Box 27, RLP.

70
  
Van was missing:
James Mathis recounts the story in
VC
, 72–73.

70
  
surveyed the parterre:
The Graffmans’ account is drawn from
I Really Should Be Practicing
, 151, and my interview with Gary and Naomi.

71
  
“This is one . . . already been there”:
TM1. The same night Van’s setting of Psalm 123, “Unto Thee I Lift Up Mine Eyes,” premiered at Calvary Baptist Church.

72
  
“that extraordinary guy”:
VCL
, 66.

72
  
Franz Liszt:
Ibid., quoting Donald Steinfirst’s
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
review
.

72
  
“Tear out this name”:
Ibid., 28. The review, in the
Denver Post
, was by Allen Young.

73
  
“create on the whole globe”:
John Lewis Gaddis,
The Cold War
(London: Allen Lane, 2005), 59.

73
  
strontium 90:
Boyer,
By the Bomb’s Early Light
, 352–53.

73
  
milk teeth:
Walter Schneir, “Strontium-90 in U.S. Children,”
The Nation
, April 25, 1959.

74
  
“Those who engage . . . government office”:
Elaine Tyler May,
Homeward Bound: American Families in the Cold War Era
(New York: Basic, 1999), 95.

74
  
Donna Sanders:
The account of the relationship and Donna’s remarks are found in her interview with
Time
’s Serrell Hillman; see SH.

74
  
Arthur Godfrey Talent Scouts:
TM1.

75
  
Buckingham Hotel:
Van’s Juilliard Placement file gives his address as Buckingham Hotel, 101 West Fifty-Seventh Street, Apt 1104; according to Hillman’s interview, Van had moved there by spring 1955.

75
  
old gospel hymns:
VCL
, 71.

75
  
Jean Heafner:
SH contains her interview with Hillman.

76
  
Mark Schubart, was gay:
Steve Swayne,
Orpheus in Manhattan: William Schuman and the Shaping of America’s Musical Life
(New York: Oxford University Press, 2011), 62.