Moscow Nights: The Van Cliburn Story-How One Man and His Piano Transformed the Cold War (76 page)

273
  
On board was Barbara Powers:
“People,”
Time
, September 5, 1960.

17: SOLE DIPLOMACY

274
  
Khrushchev set out for New York:
My reconstruction draws substantially on the eyewitness account given by Viktor Sukhodrev (
YM
), together with Khrushchev’s own recollections in his
Memoirs
, vol. 3, 264–91. Also used were
NKCS
, 410–16; Taubman,
Khrushchev
, 474–77;
Khrushchev in New York
(New York: Crosscurrents, 1960); and contemporary newspaper reports.

275
  
Federal-style town house:
The former Percy Rivington Pyne House at 680 Park Avenue, now the headquarters of the Americas Society.

275
  
“Okay, let’s go get some fresh air”:
YM.

276
  
“Dammit, I’ve even broken my watch”:
YM.
This was the explanation, related by Sukhodrev, that Khrushchev gave that day to socialist leaders who were riding with him in his car to the Soviet mission. There are several versions of the story, some of which Khrushchev spun to account for his actions. In his memoirs, Khrushchev claimed he had promised a member of the Spanish international workers’ movement that he would expose Franco’s men as criminals and that he deliberately banged his shoe to emphasize his point. Sergei Khrushchev says that a journalist stepped on his shoe on the way into the hall, and rather than struggle to bend down in front of the cameras, he had a staffer bring it to his desk wrapped in a napkin.

277
  
“So you, chairman” . . .“closing the session”:
YM.

277
  
“God bless him”:
Ibid
.

277
  
advanced spacecraft:
Robert Reeves,
The Superpower Space Race: An Explosive Rivalry Through the Solar System
(New York: Plenum, 1994), 315–16.

278
  
Richter arrived in Chicago:
Rasmussen,
Sviatoslav Richter
, 156, 159.

278
  
“the shopkeeper”:
NKCS
, 391.

279
  
“military-industrial-congressional complex”:
Eisenhower used the term in his farewell address on January 17, 1961.

279
  
“How old are you, Mr. President . . . even older”:
YM
.

279
  
“He beat the hell out of me . . . He savaged me”:
Frederick Kempe,
Berlin 1961: Kennedy, Khrushchev, and the Most Dangerous Place on Earth
(New York: Putman, 2011), 255–56.

280
  
“Yeah, well”:
YM
.

280
  
no mercy in politics:
Kempe,
Berlin 1961
, 253.

280
  
“a meeting of a giant and a pygmy”:
YM
.

280
  
televised address:
On July 25, 1961.

280
  
Life
ran a feature:
May,
Homeward Bound
, 1.

280
  
Sunday sermons:
TOML
, 238.

281
  
Khrushchev’s aides joked:
Vladislav Zubok, “Khrushchev and the Berlin Crisis (1958–1962),” CWIHP Working Paper no. 6 (May 1993), 24.

281
  
new spy satellites:
The Corona project, launched August 1960, was a by-product of
Sputnik
, which set a precedent for the free exploration of space.

281
  
“second strike capability”:
Roswell Gilpatric, October 21, 1961, reprinted in
Documents on Disarmament, 1961
(Washington, DC: U.S. Arms Control and Disarmament Agency, 1962), 545.

282
  
“at least three busts of Van Cliburn”:
“Moscow Glitters for Party Rally with Special Effort in Culture,”
NYT
, October 29, 1961.

282
  
“monstrous crimes . . . historical justice”:
Stephen F. Cohen, “The Victims Return: Gulag Survivors Under Khrushchev,” in Hollander,
Political Violence
, 63.

283
  
“not just as part of our arsenal”:
Hope for America: Performers, Politics, and Pop Culture, Library of Congress, http://www.loc.gov/exhibits/hope-for-america/gov ernment-support-for-the-arts.html.

283
  
Van played for him twice:
At the fund-raiser for the National Cultural Center, renamed the Kennedy Center after JFK’s assassination, which Van closed on November 29, 1962; and at a Congressional Club breakfast on May 2, 1963, following which he and Rildia Bee visited with the president in the Blue Room of the White House.

283
  
relying on Jackie:
“President Obama Opens White House Evening of Classical Music,” November 6, 2010, https://www.whitehouse.gov/photos-and-video/video/president-obama-opens-white-house-evening-classical-music.

283
  
“VAN CLIBURN PLAYS FOR FREE BERLIN”:
DMN
(UPI), August 31, 1961.

283
  
Ed Sullivan Show
:
The episode aired on CBS on October 8, 1961.

283
  
“I recognize the divine spark”:
Bruno Walter to Van Cliburn, draft of letter, Series I, Folder 99, Bruno Walter Papers, Music Division, New York Public Library. Van played for Walter’s last live concert appearance, on December 4, 1960, with the Los Angeles Philharmonic; Walter died in 1962.

284
  
invited Van to conduct:
Van made his conducting debut on March 5, 1961, in a memorial concert for Dimitri Mitropoulos, who had died after falling off the podium at La Scala, Milan. Leopold Stokowski was supposed to conduct but had broken his hip.

284
  
all the great orchestras:
Van also had a close relationship with Eugene Ormandy and the Philadelphia Orchestra; see their correspondence in Eugene Ormandy Papers, Kislak Center for Special Collections, Rare Books and Manuscripts, University of Pennsylvania.

284
  
“first time that a long-hair artist”:
VCL
, 162.

284
  
“Thank you for sending us Van Cliburn”:
Lyde and Charles Devall, “Cliburn Acclaimed on Anniversary of N.Y. Debut: Music World, Friends Join to Honor Van,”
KNH
, November 22, 1964.

284
  
she wrote complaining:
See their correspondence in Folders 21 and 22, Box 2, RLP. By contrast, the collection contains four folders of letters from John Browning.

284
  
Van’s old friend:
Dowis, “Rosina: A Memoir,” 374.

285
  
Winifred Hamilton:
TM1.

285
  
office and living room:
G. Kuznetsov, “Van Cliburn: Music Is Not a Collection of Sounds,”
SK
, April 25, 1963.

285
  
rented out his apartment:
Campbell, “Not This Time.” “I’m in transient status in New York,” Van explained. “I couldn’t afford to keep a flat in a hotel.”

285
  
back to Shreveport:
In 1960 the Cliburns moved to 455 Wilder Place, a smart two-story redbrick Colonial revival.

285
  
“Oh, Daddy” . . . “buy something else”:
Van Cliburn, interview by Paul Holdengräber.

285
  
“crappiest hotel in history”:
Howard Camner,
Turbulence at 67 Inches: The Autobiography
(Xlibris, 2009), 261–63.

286
  
“Well he’s a nice boy”:
VC
, 218.

18: ENDGAME

287
  
thirty-nine international competitions:
Over the five years to 1961. Culture Minister Furtseva reported the figures in a speech to the Twenty-Second Party Congress. Rasmussen,
Sviatoslav Richter
, 153.

287
  
Vladimir Ashkenazy:
Interview with the author.

288
  
American intermediaries:
Special Agent Leonard A. Butt of the FBI recorded four such requests—including one from
Pravda
and one from TASS—between June 1961 and March 1962 in the course of surveillance of one stringer for the Moscow press; see FBI files 62–12802–2/3/4/5.

288
  
Van’s salutation:
SAC, New York, to SAC, Albany, memorandum, April 9, 1963; FBI file 62–12802–8.

288
  
“addressed to his friends”:
SA [ . . . ] to SAC, New York, memorandum, November 5, 1963, FBI file 62–12802–11.

288
  
FBI logged the conversations:
Van’s declassified FBI files include fourteen reports of calls originating in Moscow between December 31, 1962, and January 3, 1968, on both business and personal matters; in several, Van thanks the caller for gifts.

288
  
told the Bureau:
“Olga Baquero, Also Known as Mrs. Alfonso Baquero, Internal Security—Russia,” July 13, 1964, FBI File SI 105–1612.

288
  
“Some politicians maintain . . . friendship”:
SA Leonard A. Butt to SAC New York, June 19, 1961, FBI file 62–12802–2.

288
  
park on the Black Sea:
NKCS
, 483.

289
  
tracked Van down in Helsinki:
N. Agayants, “Art Brings the Nations Closer,”
Komsomolskaya Pravda
, June 19, 1962.

289
  
festival of modern music:
The first Modern Music festival was held in Gorky (Nizhny Novgorod) June 9–13, 1962.

289
  
Rildia Bee . . . urged him to accept:
Drannikov (APN Novosti), interview with Van Cliburn,
Pravda Ukrainy
, June 16, 1962.

289
  
“I saw the faces . . . I wanted to play for them”:
“Part of My Heart Is in Moscow,”
Moskva
11 (1962): 173.

289
  
set off for Moscow:
For evocative footage of Van and Rildia Bee in Moscow, including Rildia Bee at the piano, see “Van Cliburn Is Playing,” film dir. Z. Tulubeva, CSCF (RCSDF), 1962, http://www.net-film.ru/en/film-5656/.