- Discordant Diplomacy:Goodwill and the Cultural Battleground of the 1958 Tchaikovsky Competition
On April 11, 1958, six months after Sputnik, a tall 23-year-old boy from Texas sat on the stage of Moscow Conservatory's recital hall between the Moscow State Orchestra and a sold-out, Soviet audience of 1,500. The audience chanted "first prize" in Russian for eight and a half minutes after Van Cliburn had just dazzled them with a brilliant performance of Rachmaninoff's Third Piano Concerto in the final round of the inaugural Tchaikovsky Piano Competition. Since Stalin's death in 1953, the Soviet Union had begun its campaign of de-Stalinization, known as the "Thaw," under its new leader, Nikita Khrushchev. Cliburn was not the first U.S. artist to visit the Soviet Union under this regime, so it was no surprise that he was allowed to enter the competition. In fact, the Moscow public enthusiastically welcomed the young musician. Surprising, instead, was the fact that Cliburn was allowed to win.
Khrushchev had begun his Thaw of Soviet political, social, and cultural policies by relaxing the ironclad government control of the arts and creative intelligentsia, the group of artists and intellectuals, rooted in Moscow, that became so captivated with Van Cliburn's musical talent and charisma. Although the inaugural Tchaikovsky Competition seems to have been established under the Stalinist mandate that a Soviet artist must win, it soon became clear that Cliburn was the fan favorite and ultimately the jury's first choice, despite suspected juror tampering. Ultimately, Khrushchev himself approved the jury's decision. [End Page 76]
Coverage of the competition was an international sensation. Upon Cliburn's return to the United States, he was received with a triumph resembling that of a war hero more than a musician. On the one hand, the American public projected Cliburn's achievement onto their image of the conflict between communism and capitalism—cultural competition being seen as a proxy for the Cold War arms race. But on the other hand, Cliburn's experience at the Tchaikovsky Competition in 1959 showed the potential for goodwill through cultural exchange. In his book, Music and Musical Life in Soviet Russia 1917-1970, Boris Schwarz writes, "Van Cliburn became an idol in Russia," and the Soviet pianist Andrei Gavrilov remembered being surprised by the difference between Van and the established image of the West: "Van looked and played like some kind of angel; he didn't fit the evil image of capitalists that had been painted for us by the Soviet Government . . . [he] changed for us this frightening image of the 'capitalist enemies.'"
Van Cliburn's musical talent was evident from an early age. The pianist was born on July 12, 1934 in Shreveport, Louisiana, to Rildia Bee and Harvey Lavan Cliburn. Harvey Lavan Cliburn Jr. quickly acquired the nickname "Van" to avoid confusion with his father. The young Cliburn family moved to Kilgore, Texas in 1941 when Harvey began work in the oil industry. Rildia Bee Cliburn, née O'Bryan, had trained as a professional pianist, and she began giving piano lessons from their home in Kilgore. In his biography of the pianist, Abram Chasins notes, "Cliburn's pianistic gift . . . [was] always self-evident. From infancy, playing the piano was to him not only a way of life but also life itself, and there is no surer sign of the born performer." Under his mother's tutelage, Van developed a flair for the Russian school of piano, which undoubtedly helped him win the Tchaikovsky Competition. In her youth, Rildia had traveled to New York to study under Arthur Friedheim. Friedheim had been an important pupil and [End Page 77] personal secretary of Franz List, who in turn studied with Czerny, a pupil of Beethoven. In addition, Friedheim had studied with Anton Rubinstein, who "founded the St. Petersburg Conservatory and, with it, essentially the Russian school of pianism." Cliburn thus inherited a rich pedagogical tradition from his mother as well as her love for Russian music. According to Chasins, "Rachmaninoff, whose records were constantly played on the family phonograph, was already one of [Cliburn's] musical gods."
Moreover, Van developed an interest in...