Young Van Cliburn (born Harvey Lavan Cliburn Jr. 1934-2013) participates in the USSR in the Tchaikovsky piano competition and wins it. It is 1958, in Moscow, and the artist is an American. Before the proclamation, the jury president feels compelled to question Chruščëv about what to do: would Comrade Nikita have agreed to award the first prize to a citizen of the enemy nation par excellence? To which the boss cuts to the chase: if he is the best, let him win. In the final performance, following the end of Rachmaninoff's third concerto, the audience in the hall gives 8 minutes of applause to the Yankee kid, after which he places the masterstroke. He offers as an encore his own classical arrangement of “Midnight in Moscow,” a song that constituted a second national anthem around there at the time.
The audience and the pianist competitors themselves, who are noticed in the background of the video shot by Soviet TV, go into raptures. But it doesn't end there. When Van Cliburn returns home, New Yorkers dedicate to him the Ticker-tape Parade, a historic kermis designed to celebrate the exploits of national heroes. Something akin to the triumphal processions of ancient Rome. This concise excerpt from the mid-twentieth century chronicle suggests insights that reverberate two comparative reflections of certain cultural aspects between a world that was and our, shall we say, harsh present.
- In the height of the Cold War, participation in artistic or sporting events, as was the case with the Olympics in ancient Greece, was not conditioned by geopolitical conflicts: the Soviets awarded an American musician, the Americans celebrated the same musician because he was awarded by the Soviets... No one ever thought of degrading him “à la manière de notre époque”: if you go and play there then you are a traitor, a Stalinist, an enemy of democracy. Between the two blocs that looked mutually at each other in a scowl pointing all their arsenal at each other, there existed a free zone in which mutual respect was exercised for the fruitful and creative activities produced by the peoples on either side. Today that zone has been obliterated, especially at the initiative of one side. There is no need to go into desultory details that are all too well known. The examples of intolerance on the Western side, at every level, on any aspect of Russian expressive activity (present and past), are uncountable.
- This whole episode, interwoven with symbolic relationships and events, makes us realize how clear it was then, to ordinary people all the way up to heads of state, that music (but we would add any creative human activity) from the moment it is expressed becomes detached from the subject that put it into being to become a thing in itself, assuming its own absolute value. From the symphony, to the novel, to the high jump record... every extraordinary expression is elevated to universal heritage, making irrelevant its origin and the personal meaning each of us would perhaps like to ascribe to it. This “profound” conception was made possible by that consciousness of historical perspective, rooted in the societies that preceded us, which identified in the creative journey of humanity the condition of existence of the present. Hence came an almost sacred respect for the works made in the past.
This whole episode, interwoven with symbolic relationships and events, makes us realize how clear it was then, to ordinary people all the way up to heads of state, that music (but we would add any creative human activity) from the moment it is expressed becomes detached from the subject that put it into being to become a thing in itself, assuming its own absolute value. From the symphony, to the novel, to the high jump record... every extraordinary expression is elevated to universal heritage, making irrelevant its origin and the personal meaning each of us would perhaps like to ascribe to it. This “profound” conception was made possible by that consciousness of historical perspective, rooted in the societies that preceded us, which identified in the creative journey of humanity the condition of existence of the present. Hence came an almost sacred respect for the works made in the past.
Photo: van Cliburn Foundation
Pianista e compositore, ha lavorato come arrangiatore per studi di registrazione e autore di soundtrack per fiction e programmi tv. Ha diretto un gruppo di imprese di post-produzione televisiva dal 1988 al 2002. Dal 2003 si occupa professionalmente di software per la gestione dei dati e progetti per la multimedialità e la comunicazione divulgativa.
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