Meihan Liu

“Shostakovich was the celebrity witness to the glories of Soviet culture, but the luxury accommodation was no recompense for the humiliation he suffered. At the official press conference, he stood up, his face a “bag of ticks and grimaces,” his eyes downcast behind thick wire-rimmed glasses, and read from a prepared statement, accusing Western “hatemongers” of “preparing world opinion for the transition from cold war to outright war.” In the audience was the Russian-born composer Nicolas Nabokov, who, like his first cousin Vladimir, had fled the revolution and taken U.S. citizenship. Nabokov watched”
― Nigel Cliff, Moscow Nights: The Van Cliburn Story-How One Man and His Piano Transformed the Cold War

“America fell prey to a hysterical Red Scare, fanned by Senator Joe McCarthy, which sought to expose Communists and fellow travelers in every area of public life, including classical music. In this toxic atmosphere, anything Russian was beyond the pale. One producer at the Voice of America, the nation’s external broadcaster, asked the music library for a recording of a popular piece called “Song of India” and found that the Red baiters had banned it. “It’s by Rimsky-Korsakov,” the librarian explained, “and we’re not supposed to use anything by Russians.”
― Nigel Cliff, Moscow Nights: The Van Cliburn Story-How One Man and His Piano Transformed the Cold War

“So long as there shall exist, by reason of law and custom, a social condemnation which, in the midst of civilization, artificially creates a hell on earth, and complicates with human fatality a destiny that is divine; so long as the three problems of the century - the degradation of man by the exploitation of his labour, the ruin of women by starvation and the atrophy of childhood by physical and spiritual night are not solved; so long as, in certain regions, social asphyxia shall be possible; in other words and from a still broader point of view, so long as ignorance and misery remain on earth, there should be a need for books such as this.”
― Victor Hugo, Les Misérables

“Shostakovich read in a shaky voice before breaking off a short way through, leaving a “suave radio baritone” to finish his speech, and decided to expose the sham. Jumping to his feet, Nabokov loudly asked if the composer supported the recent Soviet vilification of his great compatriot Igor Stravinsky. Shostakovich worshipped Stravinsky as a composer, if not always as a man, but he was forced to parrot the official line. To Nabokov, this was proof enough that Shostakovich was “not a free man, but an obedient tool of his government.”
― Nigel Cliff, Moscow Nights: The Van Cliburn Story-How One Man and His Piano Transformed the Cold War