Van Cliburn during a ticker tape parade in New York after winning the Tchaikovsky Piano Competition in Moscow in 1958. File / NYT The Cold War wasn't all bad, all spy planes and nuclear tests and ...

In 1958, at the height of the Cold War, a gangly young Texan with an impressive mop of blond curls and an aw-shucks manner traveled to the Soviet Union to take part in the first International ...

In 1958, a year after the Soviet Union launched Sputnik and two years after it crushed a democratic uprising in Hungary, the Russian people surprisingly adopted a young American pianist named Van ...

Moscow Nights: The Van Cliburn Story—How One Man and His Piano Transformed the Cold War. By Nigel Cliff. Harper; 452 pages; $28.99. To be published in Britain in November; £20. ONE night in April 1958 ...

Cliff brilliantly weaves together the politics, personalities, and pianism surrounding the first International Tchaikovsky Competition in Moscow in 1958. This portrait of a Cold War moment focuses on ...

An all-Russian programme of full-throttle emotions and heart-stopping melodies, including Tchaikovsky’s unashamedly passionate Fifth Symphony. Surrender to the romance and drama of Rachmaninoff’s ...