Music: Hero's Return

While the flashbulbs flared, a reporter asked the question: How did Van Cliburn, hero returned from Moscow, feel about playing in Carnegie Hall before some of the biggest names in U.S. music? Drawled Van: "In general, I wish I didn't have to do it."

When he arrived, he had been virtually without sleep for two nights. Mobbed by the press and friends, he sandwiched in three Manhattan rehearsals with Soviet Conductor Kiril P. Kondrashin and the Symphony of the Air. The queues for standing room started forming outside Carnegie-Hall early in the morning, and nearly an hour before the concert the hall...

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