I found my mother huddled next to our radio one April evening, listening to classical music. Her face radiated awe and incredulity.I tried to speak, but she hushed me. So I listened, too.
Someone was playing the piano, and it was glorious. Commanding. And so powerful it knocked me back. A mountain of Sound washed over me, thick with orchestra, deep drums, and oh, that pianist!
Finally, we heard wild, sustained applause and cheers. Tears streaked our faces. “My God.” My mother’s exclamation was reverent. I was bewildered. What was happening? And who was playing?
Ages later the announcer spoke key words:
…Broadcast from Moscow… First International Tchaikovsky Piano Competition…Tchaikovsky’s Piano Concerto in B-flat, played by American pianist Van Cliburn, with Kiril Kondrashin leading the Moscow Symphony Orchestra…
And much later, gasps:
Van Cliburn takes The Soviet Union’s First Prize!
The world’s major newspapers announced his triumph with huge headlines.
The next week we learned that New York City had given Cliburn- just back from the Soviet Union- a ticker-tape parade, the only time that honor has ever been granted to a classical pianist. I saw that he was just a boy, really, a slim, very tall 23-year-old Texan. Time Magazine put his face on its cover. Overnight, he was world-famous. This shy pianist had single-handedly brought two superpowers, wallowing in the murky nightmare of the Cold War, much closer. (RCA’s subsequent recording of his triumph went triple-platinum, and remained a worldwide best seller for more than a decade.)
His accomplishment marked the apex of countless thousands of hours of study and practice. The child began his musical odyssey at age three, when he tried to play what his mother’s piano students were playing. He almost managed it. She immediately took him in hand, as it was clear he had talent, even that young. Cliburn handily won every competition he entered in Texas, and made his successful debut with the Houston Symphony Orchestra when he was just 12.
His cherished mother, a marvelous pianist- and singer- in her own right, was his only teacher until he entered the prestigious Juilliard School of Music at age 18.
Imagine the scene in Moscow just 5 years later, when the Moscow Symphony Orchestra and Van Cliburn released the Tchaikovsky concerto’s last note. Pandemonium! Flowers- and bravos- flooded the stage. Cliburn was treated to over eight minutes of thunderous applause. The firm, one-bow rule had to be tossed. The jurors (composed of the greatest musicians in the Soviet Union) were astounded. They’d never heard Tchaikovsky played so magnificently.
Here’s the thing: The Soviet Union, basking in the glow of its successful launch of Sputnik in 1957, had organized the first annual International Tchaikovsky Competition to show off its cultural superiority. A Russian would win, of course! Only Russians understood- and could correctly interpret- Tchaikovsky and Rachmaninoff’s wonderful, fiendishly difficult music, which had become part of their national soul.
Piano contestants poured in from all over the world.
Nyet! It would be no contest: Russian pianists lived and breathed this music.
But Van Cliburn’s mastery of Russia’s musical giants knocked the jurors off their chairs. He buried every other national and international contestant in the preliminaries, brilliantly delivering the music of Shostakovich, Liszt and Beethoven. ‘Cleeburn’ – their pronunciation- was on every Russian tongue.
The awed, nervous jury was in a quandary. This was so embarrassing, not to mention politically devastating! He wasn’t Russian! Some frightened jurors refused to mark him up, awarding him just three or four points, while heavily favoring Russian contestants. Others, angry at this sabotage, compensated by awarding Cliburn 100 points, though the highest score permitted was 10; those ballads were snatched back and the 100s furiously erased. Shouting ensued.
Things were getting out of hand in the jury room.
Finally, fearing potentially awful consequences if they got this wrong, the desperate men decided to ring up Nikita Khrushchev himself to ask his permission.
Is Cliburn the best? Gulp. Would they dare to be honest?
Oh, yes, sir!
Well then, in that case, give it to him!
Cliburn’s unprecedented triumph marked the first time the two paranoid superpowers had actually perceived one another as fellow human beings. Khrushchev loved classical music- who knew! Now both countries could rejoice in its non-threatening power to tap deep into human emotion, and leave all of us feeling clean.
There was a palpable relaxation of political tension.
I saw him in person four years later at the Interlochen Music Camp when he played for us. (He’d just returned from a stay at Khrushchev’s Dacha on the Black Sea; the two men had become friends.) There he was, enjoying the campus for a few days, wearing the camp’s traditional comfy blue cords, and chatting up the kids. I was far too shy to approach him. I have always regretted that.
Fast-forward fifty years.
I was working in the garden a few days ago, when, out of nowhere, his name popped into my head. It had been so long! Where was he these days? I went straight into the house, and looked him up on Google. And saw that he’d died of bone cancer in February, at age 78.
I was bereft, and haunted by musical memories. Oh, if only I could have witnessed his 1958 Moscow performance…
Wait a minute! Maybe…just maybe…
I ran to my computer, which is jam-packed with miracles, and searched.
There. It. Was. Incredible! And offered to the world only recently, with YouTube’s birth. (Interested readers should CLICK HERE.)
This is powerful stuff. What I saw, and heard, literally took my breath away and brought me to tears. (Music lovers: wear earphones, and set aside 37 minutes to be riveted- and even shocked-by this music’s controlled ferocity and majesty. It’s amazing that the human mind can learn- and memorize – such a huge, complicated score, and then offer it with perfect accuracy, sensitivity and passion to you and me.)
Mr. Cliburn’s hands are huge, easily spanning 10 keys. (Eight or nine is usual.) And now, 50 years later, I can sit right next to him and watch that brilliant young man’s fingers fly effortlessly over the ivory as he, Kondrashin and the Moscow Symphony Orchestra bring Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky’s glorious music to life.
Ah, so many miracles!