Sixty Years After Van Cliburn Triumphed in Moscow, a Writer Searches for a Fabled Photograph of the Fort Worth Pianist

My mother has talked about the missing photo for as long as I can remember. It had appeared in a magazine in Moscow in the 1950s and showed Van Cliburn, the celebrated Fort Worth pianist, holding up a piano-shaped box of chocolates with his image on the lid.A photographer had captured it soon after Cliburn had stunned the U.S. and Soviet Union by winning the International Tchaikovsky Competition -- a contest created by the U.S.S.R. to show off its prowess in the arts.My grandfather, director of packaging at Moscow's Bolshevik confection factory, had designed the box and brought home the magazine to show my mother and grandmother.  Continue reading...