When the World Stopped to Listen

For a great many years, the only books written about the pianist were The Van Cliburn Legend by Abram Chasins  - a book that took many liberties with facts about Cliburn, and Howard Reigh’s Van Cliburn, which is better researched, but still rather one-sided. Within a year, however, there have two books written about the pianist. Last year, Nigel Cliff’s Moscow Nights gave a more in depth and comprehensive picture of Cliburn’s win in Moscow, as well as the impact he had on the musical world. This past weekend, I finished reading Stuart Isacoff’s When the World Stopped to Listen – Van Cliburn’s Cold War Triumph and Its Aftermath (Alfred A. Knoff, New York, 2017).

In this latest volume, Isacoff begins by revealing some interesting information about Cliburn’s mother, an accomplished pianist in her own right, as well as the young pianist’s upbringing. Starting at four years old, Cliburn had to wait on his parents at the dinner table, “as if they were guests, and then to do the same for neighbors.” Cliburn’s parents believed that this would instill a sense of humility in the young man, as well as prevent him from feeling too special. According to the author, “serving graciously became a life refrain”, and would affect Cliburn’s attitude towards his many fans and audience members. Isacoff writes: “This was especially true in the concert hall, where he came to view the audience as guests to be served, a notion that brought such attendant pressures it could turn routine musical occasions into ordeals.” Even to his dying days, Cliburn was known for his courteousness towards even strangers. Perhaps it was this attitude to please that prevented him from having an aloofness of spirit, something that all great artists need.

It was also a great surprise for me to learn that Cliburn’s legendary teacher, Rosina Lhévinne, was not the original choice of Mrs. Cliburn to be Van’s teacher. Cliburn’s friend and fellow pianist Jimmy Mathis was studying with the (at the time) even more famous Olga Samaroff. It was only Samaroff’s sudden death that led his parents to consider Lhévinne as Van’s teacher. As in the Cliff book, Iscaoff reveals how much Lhévinne was hurt by Cliburn’s failing to acknowledge her teaching – not to mention the many hours of free lessons he received from her before the competition – as his famed rose after the competition.

For me, the most interesting chapters were the ones addressing the socio-political landscape of the Soviet Union and the evolution of the Tchaikovsky Competition, as well as the chapter giving a picture of Russian society at the time. It was the year of Sputnik, when the Soviets were “basking in its scientific glory in the space race,” and they wanted to show their superiority in the sphere of music. The organizers of the competition were certain that the winners would be Soviet pianists and violinists. It was a common belief among Russians that in spite of great wealth, American society was “brutish and empty.” In that way, Cliburn’s love affair with Russians, from Khrushchev to ordinary men and women, went a long way into altering that perception. Both Cliff and Isacoff point out in their respective books that Cliburn’s win at the Tchaikovsky sowed the seeds of democracy that led eventually to Gorbachev’s Perestroika and the dissolution of the Soviet Union.

Isacoff also reveals some startling facts about Cliburn’s personal struggles with fame. According to the author, Cliburn came to rely heavily upon the treatments of Dr. Max Jacobson, whose patients included, among many celebrities, Marilyn Monroe and John F. Kennedy who was well known for his health problems. You can read more about Dr. Jacobson in many of the presidents’ biographies.

We now know that Jacobson’s infamous injections were a cocktail of amphetamines, vitamins, painkillers, steroids, and human placenta – a frightening pharmacological combination. Jacobson’s license to practice medicine was eventually revoked. It was also revealed in the current book that Cliburn had come to depend on astrology in making his personal and professional decisions, to the extent that “he did not make a move without consulting an astrologer.”

Cliburn’s eventual win at the Tchaikovsky, according to Isacoff, was far from a forgone conclusion. In the Appendix of the volume, the author includes the breakdown of scores for the pianists in the second-round which show that the race was very close between Cliburn and Lev Vlassenko, the leading Soviet contender, and Liu Shikun, the leading pianist from Communist China (who was to suffer grievously during the Cultural Revolution). It was only Van’s performance of Tchaikovsky’s Piano Concerto No. 1 as well as Rachmaninoff’s Piano Concerto No. 3 that propelled him to the very top. If you listen to his magisterial performances of these two concerti in the final round, you would understand why. I believe that in that great hall, and in front of that audience, Van Cliburn was truly inspired to give his all. And perhaps nothing that came afterwards would match the intensity and inspiration of that moment.

For me, Cliburn’s greatest impact had to be his elevation of the status (and financial well being) of concert artists, as well as, perhaps unfortunately, focusing our attention towards music competitions, and for its proliferation. There had been other American pianists who had captured top prizes at international competitions. None of them really captured the imagination of the world like Van Cliburn did.

If you were to ask pianists or musicians to name their favourite pianists, probably very few would list Van Cliburn to be among them. No, Van Cliburn’s place in music history is, for me, a result of his really creating for our generation this image of the artist as hero, and for perhaps bringing many people towards an awareness, if not an appreciation, for classical music. I believe that Van Cliburn would be for my generation what Ignacy Jan Paderewski was to the early decades of the century – an inspiring, even larger than life personality, more than a musician or a pianist.

Anyone who has an interest in music, in cold war politics, and in Soviet history and society, would find Isacoff’s well-researched and eloquently written volume a very rewarding read.

Patrick May

June 26, 2017

Moscow Nights

Hearing Van Cliburn was the greatest disappointment of my life. It was, I think, in 1977, that he came to play a recital in Vancouver. He appeared at 8:30 for a recital advertised to begin at 8:00. An announcement was made that his plane was late. I remember only two items from the concert – Mozart’s Sonata in C major, K. 330, a work he played at the 1958 Tchaikovsky competition, and Beethoven’s Sonata in C minor, Op. 13. The playing was clean but colourless and without excitement. After the inevitable standing ovation that greeted him at the end of the performance, Cliburn obligingly gave several encores before the end of the evening.

I left the hall thinking, “This was Van Cliburn?”

It is only much later that I found out that Cliburn was having one of the most difficult times of his life. His father had died, and so did Sol Hurok, his long time manager, as well as Rosina Lhévinne, his beloved teacher in Julliard. And he was tired, tired of the endless tour, and tired, perhaps of having to constantly live up to everyone’s near impossible expectations of him. He retired from concert life in 1978, about a year after his appearance in Vancouver.

There haven’t been many books written about Van Cliburn. The biography about the pianist by Howard Reich is a good starting point. Certainly the very private Cliburn would not have encouraged potential biographers. Nigel Cliff’s latest book - Moscow Nights – the Van Cliburn Story – How One Man and His Piano Transformed the Cold War (Harper Collins, 2016) – is a welcomed addition to the literature.

I could not put down Cliff’s book once I delved into it, a fascinating re-visiting of the pianist’s life and career, set against the backdrop of the height of the Soviet-United States rivalry as superpowers. Part biography, and part Cold War history, it certainly made for a great read.

I loved the pacing of the author’s storytelling, and how he alternates important chapters in Cliburn’s life with important events in the Cold War – Stalin’s death and Khrushchev’s “thaw”, his secret speech denouncing Stalin’s cult of personality, Sputnik, Gary Powers and the shooting down of the U2 over Soviet air space, the Cuban Missile Crisis, as well as the relationship between various U.S. presidents and the Soviets. Regardless of periods of even severe hostility between the two nations, Van Cliburn was always greeted in the Soviet Union as a native son, to the extent of arousing the suspicions of the FBI and J. Edgar Hoover – we mustn’t forget that this was the time of the “Red scare.” Not surprisingly, Cliff reveals that both the FBI and the KGB had files on Cliburn.

Although relying heavily on Howard Reich’s Cliburn biography, Cliff also revealed many new details that I had not known. Cliff gives us many more details about the intrigues of the competition, about Cliburn’s relationship with the other contestants, as well as how members of the jury viewed him. I had also not realized Rosina Lhévinne’s resentment at not having heard from Cliburn personally after he won the Tchaikovsky, and how Cliburn hadn’t even offered to pay her back for all the (free) extra lessons she had given him before the competition. To me, what was especially revealing was the pianist’s friendship with Khrushchev, and how his standing with the Soviet politburo fell after Khrushchev’s fall from grace, even though the Soviet and the Russian public continued to love him until his death.  

I, and I’m sure, many others, have probably wondered – what kind of a musician would Van Cliburn be had he not won the Tchaikovsky Competition? With his talent and pianistic abilities, he would have had a career as a pianist. Perhaps he could have developed as a conductor, as he had already exhibited talent in that direction. But he simply didn’t have time to do anything else but play one concert after another, and play for one president after another. I suppose his win in Moscow had also been at least partly responsible for today’s proliferation of music competition, of young musicians’ mindset that winning a major competition would “make” their career like Van Cliburn.

As Cliff writes, “Fame had set him up to be the greatest pianist of all, and he could not quite manage that.” What person could? Cliburn’s mother had brought him up to be a Southern gentleman, a church-going, courteous, and somewhat idealistic man who believed in the power of music in bridging people. Again, to quote Cliff, “As the gears of international relations turned and, for a moment, clicked into place, he was delighted to play his part.” At the end, he remained an American icon, a symbol of greatest in the arts that the country is capable of.

At its best, Van Cliburn’s performances should be remembered for their transcendental pianism as well as beauty of sound, a throwback to the days of Rachmaninoff and Hoffman. Perhaps he saved his best and most inspired playing for his beloved Russian audience, an audience that accepted him for the artist he was. Certainly he deserved to be remembered for his performances of Tchaikovsky and Rachmaninoff concerti more than having played Moscow Nights for Gorbachev.

Thinking of Van Cliburn

It was with great sadness that I read of pianist Van Cliburn’s passing last week at age 78. Mr. Cliburn had been suffering from bone cancer, and succumbed to illness on Wednesday, February 27^th.

For classical music lovers, especially those growing up in the 1960’s, Van Cliburn was a golden name. So great was Cliburn’s fame that his name was even mentioned in Charles Schulz’s Peanuts cartoon.

At the height of the Cold War, American-born Cliburn won not only the gold medal at the 1958 International Tchaikovsky Competition in Moscow, but also the heart of the Russian people. One of the most memorable images of the pianist is a photograph taken in the Great Hall of the Moscow Conservatory. Cliburn is at the piano, looking heavenward and soulful; the area of the stage around the piano strewed with flowers thrown by adoring fans, and right in front of the stage lip are young Russian girls swooning over his playing – it is the ultimate image of the Artist-as-Hero.

From 1958 to 1978, Cliburn had one of the most spectacular careers imaginable in classical music. In 1978, Cliburn decided to take a sabbatical from concert giving, and gave only occasional performances since returning to the spotlight in 1987. His name, however, lives on in the prestigious Van Cliburn International Piano Competition, from which the careers of many talented pianists have been launched.

Every artist has an image in the minds of the public. It is this image that the public knows and loves, not the person. Cliburn, more than many artists, has been the victim of many myths and half-truths. These oft-repeated statements have been so entrenched in people’s minds that most of us have trouble separating fact from fantasy. Even in the many tributes and obituaries written at the time of Cliburn’s death, critics took no time in once again re-hashing these very tired statements.

The myths and half-truths surrounding Cliburn can be summarized quite succinctly:

1.                  Cliburn’s career was fizzling in 1957 before he went to compete in Moscow

2.                  Cliburn was a hit with the Russian audience because he was the exotic American, and his looks appealed to the Russian public

3.                  The only pieces Cliburn played well were Tchaikovsky’s Piano Concerto No. 1 and Rachmaninoff’s Piano Concerto No. 3

4.                  Cliburn was not able to sustain a long career

5.                  Cliburn did not live up to his early promise

How do we answer these “charges”?

Van Cliburn won the prestigious Leventritt Competition in 1955, after which he received a lot of recital and concerto engagements. In 1957, he was called up for military service, and he therefore told his managers not to book any dates for him in the subsequent year. However, he was rejected by the army for health reasons, and therefore had a relatively open year in 1958. The timing thus became perfect that he was able to compete in Moscow in 1958.

Cliburn won the hearts of the Russian people because of his artistry. Even with the very poor recording quality of the time, his playing at the Tchaikovsky competition, in front of some of the greatest pianists of the time who were judging the competition, was simply spectacular. Sviatoslav Richter, one of the great pianists of our time, called Cliburn a genius, adding that he did not usually associate such a word with performers. Alexander Goldenweiser, a contemporary of Rachmaninoff and the dean of Soviet pianists, said that he had not heard Rachmaninoff’s 3^rd concerto played better since the composer last performed. There were other American pianists competing in Moscow in 1958 – Daniel Pollack and Raymond Lowenthal, to name just two - but none of them created a stir the way Cliburn did.

In the years following his Moscow win, Cliburn played solo and concerto appearances, and built up a vast repertoire. Yes, he was probably asked to play Tchaikovsky and Rachmaninoff more often, but he also essayed large chunks of solo repertoire as well as the standard concerti in the repertory. Great conductors, including Fritz Reiner, Charles Munch, Eugene Ormandy, Zubin Mehta, and Bruno Walter, loved playing with him.

As mentioned before, Cliburn had already enjoyed quite a successful performing career since 1955. After winning the Moscow competition, from 1958 to 1978, Cliburn played well over a hundred concerts for a period of twenty years - not able to sustain a career? Let’s be serious here. Many young musicians would love to “not be able to sustain a career” the way Cliburn did. On top of fulfilling his concert engagements, Cliburn lent his name and talent generously to causes that were close to his heart, namely, organizations and events that promote the arts, such as the Interlochen Arts Academy, and his own Van Cliburn Piano Competition.

As to the question of whether Cliburn “fulfilled his early promise”, one would have to ask with what criteria we are judging him. Vladimir Horowitz, considered by many as the “greatest” (a silly word) pianist of the 20^th century, never played as many concerts as Cliburn, and took frequent sabbaticals from the stress of concert-giving. In the last years of his life, Horowitz’s repertoire dwindled to only a handful of solo works and two or three concerti. Yet no one complained that Horowitz did not expand his repertoire, or that he did not “fulfil his promise” as an artist. And no one criticized Horowitz for playing Rachmaninoff and not Bartok. Jascha Heifetz stopped giving concerts at the height of his career, yet no one ever questioned his decision or criticized him for not able to “sustain a long career.” Arthur Rubinstein was an exception, giving performance up to his late eighties, when he was already half-blind, and loving it.

Polonius’ words from Act I of Hamlet, “To thine own self be true,” should be a dictum that every artist live by. I have not always responded to the way Cliburn played certain repertoire, but whether or not we are sympathetic to his music making, we should respect the fact that throughout his life, Van Cliburn had conducted his life and career his way. We can and should be grateful to him for having brought joy and beauty to music lovers the world over for over two decades.

Perhaps history will judge him with greater compassion and fairness, and with less cynicism, than his contemporaries had.

Rest in Peace, Van Cliburn.