{"id":860,"date":"2018-12-31T14:24:20","date_gmt":"2018-12-31T14:24:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wordpress.etypegoogle10.com\/?p=860"},"modified":"2018-12-31T14:24:20","modified_gmt":"2018-12-31T14:24:20","slug":"lone-star-book-reviews-26","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wordpress.etypegoogle10.com\/?p=860","title":{"rendered":"Lone Star Book Reviews"},"content":{"rendered":"
<\/div>\n

Lone Star Book Reviews
of Texas books appear weekly
at LoneStarLiterary.com<\/a><\/span><\/h1>\n
\n

Nigel Cliff<\/span> is a historian, biographer, and translator. His first book, The Shakespeare Riots,<\/span> was a finalist for the National Award for Arts Writing and was chosen as one of the Washington Post\u2019s best books of the year. His second book, The Last Crusade: The Epic Voyages of Vasco da Gama,<\/span> was a New York Times Notable Book. His most recent book is a translation and edition of The Travels by Marco Polo.<\/span> A former film and theater critic for the London Times<\/span> and contributor to The Economist,<\/span> he writes for a range of publications, including the New York Times Book Review.<\/span> A Fellow of Harris Manchester College, Oxford, he lives in London.<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n

\n

<\/p>\n

<\/div>\n

<\/a><\/span>BIOGRAPHY<\/p>\n

Nigel Cliff<\/span><\/p>\n

Moscow Nights: The Van Cliburn Story \u2013 How One Man and His Piano Transformed the Cold War<\/span><\/a><\/span><\/p>\n

Harper<\/p>\n

Hardcover, 978-0-0623-3316-2, 464 pages, $28.99 (also available as paperback and ebook)<\/p>\n

Reviewed by Si Dunn<\/p>\n

Picture 100,000 people jammed onto sidewalks cheering as a ticker-tape parade<\/span> surged through New York City.<\/p>\n

This time, it wasn\u2019t an astronaut, conquering general, or world-champion athlete riding high in the back of a Lincoln Continental convertible. It was Harvey Lavan \u201cVan\u201d Cliburn,<\/span> a twenty-three-year-old concert pianist from Kilgore, Texas.<\/p>\n

America\u2019s Cold War with the Soviet Union was at its height. Yet Van Cliburn was being celebrated because had just returned from Moscow. He had stunned the world by winning the first International Tchaikovsky Piano Competition.<\/p>\n

Soviet leaders had conceived the 1958 event to trumpet the \u201csuperiority\u201d of USSR cultural achievements. Yet Cliburn\u2019s keyboard performances had enthralled his Russian audiences. The ovations he received were so long and strong that Soviet Premiere Nikita Khrushchev was convinced to give the prize to Cliburn, rather than the Soviet pianist secretly picked in advance to \u201cwin.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cIn the summer of 1958,\u201d writes Nigel Cliff<\/span> in his captivating, well-researched biography Moscow Nights,<\/span> \u201cVan Cliburn was not only the most famous musician in America. He was just about the most famous person in America \u2013 and barring the president, quite possibly the most famous American in the world.\u201d<\/p>\n

Cliff\u2019s recent book, his fourth, tracks how a child musical prodigy born in Shreveport, Louisiana, rose to international stardom. It also deals, deftly and engrossingly, with the dangerous political atmosphere inside the Soviet Union in the years leading up to Cliburn\u2019s stunning victory. And it explores his life afterward, in New York and Fort Worth, and his continued involvements in concerts and recordings, plus international cultural diplomacy.<\/p>\n

Van Cliburn\u2019s fame came with a price, the author emphasizes. \u201cAs Van\u2019s victory became a lead story on every global outlet, many eyes turned to watch his next step,\u201d writes Cliff. \u201cAt the State Department, Secretary Dulles ordered officers to report on the young pianist\u2019s personality, attitude, and reliability. In the Kremlin, the Central Committee began a detailed investigation of his case. The KGB opened a file on him, and so did the FBI.\u201d Journalists tracked him, and fans called from everywhere.<\/p>\n

In 1960, soon after an American U-2 spy plane was shot down over the Soviet Union, Van Cliburn again played a role in helping ease diplomatic tensions. He returned to Moscow to perform.<\/p>\n

\u201cI have a feeling that I have come home,\u201d he told the big crowd that greeted him. \u201cOf course you know I have always loved Russian music, but when I first got to know your country it was as if I got a second Russian soul.\u201d<\/p>\n

Over the years that followed before his death in 2013, he made repeated trips to Russia or performed for Russian leaders visiting the U.S. Even during great tensions between Russia and America, he drew rousing applause from Russian audiences. Little known to many Americans, feared leaders such as Stalin, Khrushchev, and others in the Kremlin were connoisseurs of classical composers.<\/p>\n

Nigel Cliff\u2019s Moscow Nights<\/span> is superb, eye-opening reading for anyone who enjoys music, history, and international intrigue.<\/p>\n

* * * * *<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Lone Star Book Reviews of Texas books appear weekly at LoneStarLiterary.com Nigel Cliff is a historian, biographer, and translator. His first book, The Shakespeare Riots, was a finalist for the National Award for Arts Writing and was chosen as one of the Washington Post\u2019s best books of the year. His second book, The Last Crusade: […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-860","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.etypegoogle10.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/860","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.etypegoogle10.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.etypegoogle10.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.etypegoogle10.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.etypegoogle10.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=860"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.etypegoogle10.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/860\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.etypegoogle10.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=860"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.etypegoogle10.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=860"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.etypegoogle10.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=860"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}