The rage of Moscow this week was a lanky (6 ft. 4 in.), curly-haired Texan whose long, flashing fingers at the piano keyboard put a rare thaw into the cold war.
Van Cliburn, 23, blazed through the opening round of the first Tchaikovsky International Piano and Violin Festival with 49 other pianists from 19 countries, and his twelve-note span carried him triumphantly through the second round. By then the town's elite was on its ear. To hear him in the finals, standees jammed the aisles in the Moscow Conservatory's deep balconies. Soldiers held back...
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