Stuart Isacoff’s new book is a biography of pianist Van Cliburn that focuses on his victory at the 1958 Tchaikovsky International Piano Competition in Moscow. As the 1958 competition came at the height of the Cold War, Cliburn’s victory was seen as a proxy win for the United States over communism, and therefore came with an outsized aura of acclaim and publicity, culminating in the first, last and only ticker tape parade in New York City to honor a classical pianist, or indeed, a musician of any kind. “So startling was this victory in the middle of the Cold War,” as a 1989 New York Times article put it, “that even people with the smallest pretense to musical culture came to know his name.”

I have not the smallest pretense to musical culture; all I really knew about Van Cliburn going into this book was a miniscule degree of familiarity with the piano competition that’s held to honor him every four years in Fort Worth. Cliburn was a Texan, a product of Kilgore, Texas (the author reminds us, if anyone needs reminding, that Kilgore’s other main cultural product is the world-famous Kilgore College Rangerettes, a red, white and blue dance troupe that is perhaps best known for performing at halftime of Dallas Cowboys games). He was the son of a piano teacher, and spent a good part of his teenage years criss-crossing the Lone Star State to play in local concerts.

"[Isacoff] combines a sharp, unsparing biographical eye with a mastery of the musical and social history of the time."

Willie Nelson (a fellow Texan and contemporary of Cliburn’s, although sadly not ever a collaborator) once sang that he was a country boy who learned that “the pitfalls of the city are extremely real.” Cliburn, who always described himself as a country boy, left Texas for Juilliard, and late nights at burlesque bars populated by drag queens --- which is not the sort of entertainment you could get in Kilgore then, and probably not now. He also found a teacher, Rosina Lhévinne, a former student at the Moscow Conservatory, who nurtured his unique playing style.

The difficulty with WHEN THE WORLD STOPPED TO LISTEN is twofold. First, of course, is the omnipresent problem that it’s hard to write about music, period. Isacoff does what he can to differentiate Cliburn from other pianists --- “plush” is a word that is used more than once, so is “romantic” --- but it’s difficult to explain what it is that made him not only a great pianist in a world filled with outstanding pianists, but why the Russians took to the tall, lanky Texan so enthusiastically. Second, Cliburn himself doesn’t come off as being all that interesting. As Iscaoff writes him, he is often little more than an eccentric bundle of nervous attitudes --- stage fright crossed with amphetamines, for the most part. Cliburn was known for being extraordinarily nice, and for always being late to everything --- which Isacoff interprets as a passive-aggressive way of dealing with negative emotions.

The meat of the story, though, is the 1958 Tchaikovsky competition, and the political and social muddle that Cliburn fell into when his plane landed in Moscow. Isacoff is in his element here, bringing the various competitors to life, and detailing the artistic and diplomatic nuances. Winning the Tchaikovsky wasn’t a major priority for the Americans --- who apparently gave serious thought to sending Neil Sedaka, of all people, to compete. But it was a huge priority to the Soviets to have a Russian pianist win, and the struggle between Communist dogma and popular sentiment played out at the highest levels of the Kremlin.

WHEN THE WORLD STOPPED TO LISTEN is a polished, chatty retelling of the most consequential competition in the political history of classical music. Isacoff pulls aside the curtain on the competition, from the backroom dealings to the (disgusting and dangerous) contents of the drug cocktail that fueled Cliburn to victory. He combines a sharp, unsparing biographical eye with a mastery of the musical and social history of the time.