Moscow Nights: The Van Cliburn Story-How One Man and His Piano Transformed the Cold War (72 page)

209
  
“Horowitz, Liberace and Presley”:
“All-American Virtuoso.”

209
  
“It’s a dream”:
VCL
, 132.

210
  
undignified for a musician:
Leopold Mannes of the Mannes College of Music, in “3 Bands to March in Cliburn Parade,”
NYT
, May 15, 1958.

210
  
“PARADE FOR PIANIST LAGS”:
New York Herald Tribune
, May 14, 1958.

210
  
“I could have gone to Moscow”:
Norman Shetler, interview with the author.

210
  
“green-eyed poem”:
VCL
, 172.

210
  
“arranged” Van’s victory:
Ibid., 200.

210
  
report marked
TOP SECRET:
“Van Cliburn,” FBI summary, February 19, 1968 (FOIA). The information first appears in a report of December 21, 1963, but was presumably received shortly after the competition.

210
  
“Van Cliburn is here”:
VCL
, 149.

210
  
“God bless you, son”:
Ibid.

211
  
first private Soviet citizen to meet the American president:
Gregor Tassie,
Kirill Kondrashin: His Life in Music
(Lanham, MD: Scarecrow, 2009), 158. Through his State Department interpreter, Alexander Akalovsky, Kondrashin also passed on the Soviet people’s compliments on the birth of a great American musician.

211
  
“that kind of ordeal over there”:
Felix Belair Jr., “Eisenhower Greets Van Cliburn; Flies in Helicopter to Gettysburg,”
NYT
, May 24, 1958.

211
  
twelve minutes:
From 11:05 to 11:17. See Eisenhower’s Presidential Appointment Book for Friday, May 23, 1958, http://www.eisenhower.archives.gov/research/online_documents/presidential_appointment_books/1958/May_1958.pdf. The Afghan ambassador also got twelve minutes.

211
  
“Yes, I think so”:
Sound Recording 306-EN-G-T-5781, “Van Cliburn Washington Press Conference,” May 23, 1958, RG 306, NACP.

212
  
“play it very cautiously”:
A. H. Belmont to L. V. Boardman, memorandum, “Van Clibern [
sic
] Internal Security,” May 9, 1958, FBI (FOIA).

212
  
“number two papa”:
Winzola McLendon, “Van Toasted in Vodka and Champagne,”
WP
, May 25, 1958.

213
  
“entire employment record”:
Wiley T. Buchanan Jr., “Presentation of Credentials to President Eisenhower by the Soviet Ambassador,” Washington, DC, February 11, 1958, reprinted as document 37 in
FRUS X:1
, https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1958–60v10p1/d37.

213
  
another lengthy meeting
: John Foster Dulles, “Memorandum of Conversation,” Washington, DC, March 3, 1958, reprinted as document 38 in
FRUS X:1
, https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1958–60v10p1/d38.

213
  
“According to Coyne”:
A. H. Belmont to L. V. Boardman, memorandum, “Van Cliburn, Kirill Kondrashin—Internal Security,” May 26, 1958, FBI (FOIA).

13: “HE’S BETTER THAN ELVIS BY FAR!”

214
  
“You’ve got to let this poor boy have some sleep”:
VCL
, 153.

214
  
“What is that you’re holding”:
VC
, 161–62.

215
  
three thousand dollars:
VCL
, 146.

215
  
“back to my apartment”:
Abram Chasins, “Will Success Spoil Van Cliburn?”
NYT
, June 22, 1958. Chasins also recounts the following day’s activities.

215
  
“A great event”:
“Van Cliburn’s 1958 Broadcast Debut from Carnegie Hall (May 26, 1958),” audio recording, WQXR, http://www.wqxr.org/#!/story/272469-piano-legend-van-cliburn-dies-78/. Included is Abram Chasins’s intermission interview with Van.

215
  
“I do hope you will forgive me”:
Ibid.

215
  
“Y’all go along”:
Chasins recounts the events of the early morning in
VCL
, 154–55.

216
  
Person to Person
:
The live show was broadcast on Friday, May 30, 1958.

216
  
planted the sapling:
“Cliburn in Salute to Rachmaninoff,”
NYT
, June 1, 1958.

217
  
“MILLION-DOLLAR CONTRACT”:
Rogers, “Midnight Conversation.”

217
  
What’s My Line?
:
Episode 416, May 25, 1958.

217
  
Russian bear:
VCL
, 155; “Soviet Conductor Leaves,”
NYT
, June 2, 1958.

217
  
“I wish you the greatest success”:
“London Audience of 7,000 Hails Cliburn in Concert Conducted by Kondrashin” (AP),
NYT
, June 16, 19 58.

218
  
saturating the fair:
MMP, April 16, 1958, Folder 5, Box 2, WSP.

218
  
with the Philadelphia Orchestra:
Walter H. Waggoner, “U.S. Hopes to Sign Cliburn for Fair,”
NYT
, April 23, 1958; Howard Taubman, “Cliburn at Fair,”
NYT
, July 6, 1958.

218
  
“I listened to Cliburn”:
Arthur Friedheim,
Life and Liszt: The Recollections of a Concert Pianist
, ed. Theodore L. Bullock (New York: Taplinger, 1961), 24. Bullock was the open-eyed listener; Rildia Bee, he concluded, had clearly been Friedheim’s most receptive pupil and had become the greatest teacher of them all.

218
  
Paris:
“Cliburn a ‘Virtuoso’ to Paris,”
NYT
, June 28, 1958.

218
  
arrived in the Windy City:
VCL
, 160;
VC
, 170.

218
  
eighteen thousand, for
Carmen
:
Ross Parmenter, “The World of Music,”
NYT
, June 22, 1958; John Briggs, “The World of Music,”
NYT
, August 31, 1958.

219
  
predicted he would become a big star:
Arlene Dahl interviewed by Peter Rosen, Reel 15,
Van Cliburn—Concert Pianist
elements, VCA.

219
  
audience of 22,500:
Ross Parmenter, “22,500 Hear Cliburn at Stadium,”
NYT
, August 5, 1958. The concert was on August 4.

219
  
nearly ended in tragedy:
SAC, New York to Director, FBI, memorandum, August 6, 1958, “Van Cliburn Information Concerning,” FBI file 105–70035–6; John Edgar Hoover to E. Tomlin Bailey, director, Office of Security, Department of State, memorandum, August 15, 1958, “Van Cliburn Information Concerning,” FBI (FOIA). The target of Cliburn Sr.’s ire is redacted but may be inferred from the context.

220
  
“Ku Klux Klan member”:
The conjecture is refuted by strong testimony that the Cliburns were free of color prejudice.

220
  
Sergei Dorensky:
Interview with Lyuba Vinogradova.

220
  
Van Cliburn’s school:
Olmstead,
Juilliard
, 167; “2d Day in City Busy for Soviet Visitors,”
NYT
, July 9, 1958.

220
  
“I felt very sorry”:
Sound Recording 306-EN-G-T-7952A-B, “Van Cliburn Press Conference Held at Steinway Hall,” [September 25, 1958], RG 306, NACP. See also “Khrushchev Says Music Aids Amity” (AP),
NYT
, May 31, 1958. The visitor was Robert Dowling, chairman of the American National Theater and Academy, which organized the expert panels for the arts exchange program.

220
  
still hoping:
“Soviet Extends Bid to Pianist Cliburn,”
NYT
, August 2, 1958; “Russians Again Say Cliburn Accepted,”
NYT
, August 3, 1958.

221
  
“not up to them”:
“Cliburn to Join Russian Concert,”
NYT
, August 10, 1958.

221
  
“A young American”:
Howard Taubman, “Musical ‘Summit’ in Belgian Accord,”
NYT
, August 18, 1958.

222
  
scanning the jukebox:
Gus Schuettler, “Piano Prodigy Van Cliburn Arrives in Heidelberg,”
Stars and Stripes
, August 1958.

222
  
spring 1959:
“Cliburn to Tour Soviet in ’59” (AP),
NYT
, November 6, 1958.

223
  
one he called that September:
Sound Recording 306-EN-G-T-7952A-B, “Van Cliburn Press Conference Held at Steinway Hall,” [September 25, 1958]; RG 306, NACP. Van donated the full $1,250 he had been able to take out of the USSR.

223
  
Metropolitan Opera:
Ross Parmenter, “‘Met’ Sets a Record as Its 74th Season Opens,”
NYT
, October 28, 1958.

223
  
New Yorker . . . dying of cancer:
Patricia Dane Rogers, “Van Cliburn’s Piano Provided a Glorious Coda to a Dying Father’s Life in the 1950s,”
WP
, February 28, 2013.

223
  
old “friends”:
VCL
, 173.

224
  
“At Victor these days”:
“Cliburn Album Sells Like Hot Single,”
Billboard
, August 18, 1958.

224
  
“bottom of our hearts”:
VCL
, 161. The concert was on September 29, 1958.

224
  
“To watch Elvis”:
John W. Stevens, “Cliburn Sets Off a Teen-Age Jam,”
NYT
, October 27, 1958.

224
  
Boston:
“Boston to Hear Cliburn Twice” (UPI),
NYT
, September 23, 1958.