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booksWhen Little Is Big Josef Lhévinne, were classmates of Rachmaninoff, How a $1,000 grant rocked and had immigrated to the U.S. after losing their two warring cultures savings in the Russian Revolution. BY ASHLEY MAY A boyish Baptist Texan in New York City drawn to Russian music at a time when it had very little cachet, Cliburn was an anomaly. He had a brush Much writing about charitable work today is focused with fame when he won the philanthropically funded on “big.” How to make a “big bet.” Making bigger Leventritt Award and toured the United States for a footprints by replicating your program. Attracting few years. But after the dew wore off his fresh baby bigger partners to good causes. It’s enticing—who face, and he grew professionally hesitant and anxious, doesn’t love a larger splash? And don’t huge problems he began to struggle. After his mother took a hard fall, require huge solutions? he moved back to Kilgore to keep an eye on her. He It’s with these eyes that I recently read Moscow took on her students, and began to play for the local Nights by Nigel Cliff, a narrative of the life of con- Lutheran church. He awaited a draft summons from cert pianist Van Cliburn. With the trill of a key, the Army, which eventually excused him from service he became the Elvis Presley of the U.S.S.R. at the because of a long history of nosebleeds and allergies. height of the Cold War. Cliff describes Cliburn’s Today, we might say Cliburn was then in the “val- journey to master Tchaikovsky and Rachmaninoff, ley of death”—that period between the end of formal then bring their deeply Russian music back to the study and the confident establishment of vocational Russian people. In the process, he brought classical credibility. His agent was trying to arrange a European music to the masses. And some timely philanthropy tour, but Van was reluctant to commit. “It was the low- propelled him along this journey. est ebb of his young professional life,” writes Cliff. Harvey “Van” Cliburn was born in 1934. His Then a series of small philanthropic acts began father was a railroad-station agent who became an to accumulate. Rosina Lhévinne heard of a new oil buyer, moving his young family to Kilgore, Texas, Moscow Nights: International Tchaikovsky Competition in Moscow, in the process. The boy’s mother was a piano teacher The Van Cliburn Story: and through sheer will nagged Cliburn into agreeing whose dream of becoming a concert performer had How One Man and His to participate. Then Juilliard dean Mark Schubart been hampered by parents who didn’t approve of Piano Transformed went in search of someone to sponsor the penni- women as public entertainers. She had studied with the Cold War less pianist. (Van was known for being generous to a By Nigel Cliff a prominent Russian teacher and was a time cap- fault. After a piano broke during one of his perfor- sule of a particular style of piano playing no longer mances, he immediately bought the hosting church in vogue. She would entrust this lost knowledge to a new piano, taking on debt akin to the size of his her son—who at a young age declared his interest in car payment.) playing piano for a living, and practiced long enough After rebuffs from government administrators of to back it up. the foreign-exchange program, Schubart finally con- Mrs. Cliburn sent her son to play at any venue vinced the Martha Baird Rockefeller Aid to Music for any audience, starting with hymns at the nearby Program to subsidize Cliburn’s participation in the funeral home before he knew how to read letters on competition with a $1,000 grant. The reluctant Van a page. At 12, Van had his first “major” performance: had to be convinced to accept the donation. memorizing Tchaikovsky’s Piano Concerto No. 1 While Cliff is telling this story, he also describes and performing for the annual Texas State Music the rise of Nikita Khrushchev and his spiraling Cold Contest. He won the $200 prize, and played with the War with the United States. Amidst the late-1950s Houston Symphony Orchestra. After his brief flirta- jousting between the superpowers, the Union of tion with operatic singing was thwarted by puberty, Soviet Composers suggested that a high-profile the tracks were laid for him; he would focus on piano, music competition on Russian soil would be the and only piano, for the rest of his life. perfect propaganda opportunity, because “classical After high school his mother escorted him to music had become prime evidence in the Soviets’ New York City, where she left him with Russian-born triumphalist case that their political system was the Juilliard teacher Rosina Lhévinne. She was, in Cliff ’s perfected culmination of everything that had come words, “America’s foremost link to the golden age of before.” The Soviet state then employed 900,000 arts Russian Romanticism.” She and her husband, pianist workers under the Ministry of Culture, and operated 54 PHILANTHROPY Males Beyond the Pale An invisible army of able-bodied men are 503 theater companies, 314 arts middle schools, 48 not working, and getting away with it high schools, and 43 advanced conservatories. A BY DAVID BASS young phenom pianist named Lev Vlassenko was expected to win this inaugural music battle. But Lev didn’t win, and not because he crumbled. Instead, the Russian people unexpectedly swooned I’ve recently authored two guidebooks for The for a sensitive young American who came to their Philanthropy Roundtable, Clearing Obstacles to Work homeland and played their music in a lush style their and then Learning to Be Useful, about how thoughtful own performers had forgotten. Van was described as donors can help economic strugglers become gainfully an “American Sputnik” who completely reoriented employed and self-sufficient. The reasons for these expectations of what the “philistine nation” could books are self-evident—too many Americans today are do. After his performances were broadcast across the unemployed or lack the skills to thrive in our modern Soviet Union, Cliburn became a national sensation, economy. Many of these individuals rely on welfare or with even a teenage following that rivaled rock ‘n’ roll disability payments instead of earned income. Nicholas groupies. Khrushchev himself had to give permission Eberstadt’s Men Without Work reveals the depth of to award Cliburn the competition’s first prize. this problem, and warns that the pattern of prime-age “Vanya” returned to the U.S.S.R. several times, males fleeing work can no longer safely be ignored. to ever-increasing and more-excited crowds. His Eberstadt uses stark words to describe our cur- career in the United States skyrocketed as well. He rent situation. Unemployed males today make up experienced the first—and so far only—tickertape “a sort of invisible army, ghost soldiers lost in an parade staged in New York for a classical musician. overlooked, modern-day depression.” The facts back He popped up regularly in the White House, includ- up his rhetoric. By 2016, more than 7 million men ing for a summit between Reagan and Gorbachev between the ages of 26 and 54 were idle and not in 1987 where he told the world leaders that “I love seeking to enter the labor market. That’s up from my home country…but in addition to that…I love Men Without Work: about a million counterparts in 1965. In 2015, work the Russian people, and your culture and your art… America’s rates for U.S. prime-age males were worse than and it is for both my beloved president and for you Invisible Crisis during the Great Depression. that I am so happy to do this.” The night ended in By Nicholas Eberstadt This non-working brotherhood doesn’t include an impromptu singalong with hugs and kisses and the unemployed worker who is actively seeking a new applause. Then-Vice-President Bush said, “I’ve never job. This is a cohort with deeper pathologies. They seen anything like it in this house.” have dropped out, unplugged, and given up on work Today the performer’s legacy is continued by the altogether. They depend on wives, girlfriends, older Van Cliburn Foundation, which was organized not family members, and government support (particu- by the man himself but by admiring volunteers. The larly disability payments) to survive. National Guild of Piano Teachers created a $10,000 Eberstadt begins his case by providing a brief international competition named in his honor and statistical history of tumbling labor force partic- held in Fort Worth. Now in its sixth decade, the ipation. Male work rates began a steady decline competition is still organized and run entirely by pri- decades ago, but really fell off a cliff over the last vate money and volunteers, and it has launched many 15 years. Eberstadt notes that a full 10 million more sterling careers. The foundation also brings classical male workers would now be in the labor force if the artists to Fort Worth for concerts, hosts competitions employment patterns of 1965 simply held true today. for amateur pianists, and leads a music-education The only reason this hasn’t damaged the U.S. effort in elementary schools. economy more badly is because of the increase of Thus did a humble Texan, his driven mom, female labor. Women have partly offset the declines and a timely philanthropic gift nudge world affairs. in the male work ethic, with the percentage of Somehow, people adoring the same piece of art, in women in the labor market more than doubling two very different countries, helped thaw hearts that between 1948 and 2015.