This Week in Classical Music: March 7, 2022.War in Ukraine. We find it very difficult to write about music amidst the barbaric aggression of Russia against Ukraine.Putin’s unprovoked war against a country of 40 million is a watershed moment in European history: there hasn’t been a war of this scale since the fall of the Nazis.Putin clearly is a war criminal: his forces bombard civilian areas, schools, kindergartens, and we hope that, like Slobodan Milošević of Serbia, he will end up at the International Criminal Court in the Hague.The war is a humanitarian catastrophe, and Western response was swift and unified, with sanctions against Russia and aide to Ukraine.Music administrators around the world also got into the game, firing Valery Gergiev, Anna Netrebko and Denis Matsuyev from main stages and theaters of Europe and America after they refused to sign letters condemning Putin’s invasion.While we find these artists’ support of Putin and his regime reprehensible, we are somewhat ambivalent about what seems like a mob action against them.On the one hand we’re glad to see Gergiev gone (we also happen to think that he is overrated as conductor).But Gergiev has been close to Putin for decades.Why didn’t we see any action when Putin illegally annexed Ukrainian Crimea, with Gergiev’s full-throated support?Putin has committed war crimes before: he was the main enabler of Syria’s dictator Assad, and it was his, Putin’s, warplanes that bombed hospitals in Aleppo.Why wasn’t Gergiev fired back then?Is it because Syrian lives matter less than Ukrainian?As for Netrebko, she did support Putin’s 2014 invasion of Ukraine, but it seems that her main fault is that Putin likes her a lot.Netrebko was not the only one who supported Putin back in 2014: more than five hundred (!) Russian cultural luminaries signed a letter in support of the annexation of Crimea, the famous violist Yuri Bashmet and violinist Vladimir Spivakov among them.Since the current war had started, Spivakov and several other signed a meek letter against it, but not Bashmet.Will all “unrepented” musicians be banned from playing in the West?As we noted above, we don’t have a strong opinion about actions against Putin’s artists but find several things troubling.Is it OK to require political loyalty (or, in this case, disloyalty) statements from artists?Why do we treat artist differently, and in a seemingly arbitrary way?Of course, these questions have been asked before, when ardent Hitler’s supporters and Nazi party members Herbert von Karajan and Karl Böhm were quickly denazified and then accepted in the West while clearly not as culpable Wilhelm Furtwängler was not.All this pales compared to the war catastrophe and Putin’s evil, but the question of artists, politics and ethics are important and we’ll have to deal with them in years to come.
Ukraine War, 2022
This Week in Classical Music: March 7, 2022. War in Ukraine. We find it very difficult to write about music amidst the barbaric aggression of Russia against Ukraine. Putin’s unprovoked
war against a country of 40 million is a watershed moment in European history: there hasn’t been a war of this scale since the fall of the Nazis. Putin clearly is a war criminal: his forces bombard civilian areas, schools, kindergartens, and we hope that, like Slobodan Milošević of Serbia, he will end up at the International Criminal Court in the Hague. The war is a humanitarian catastrophe, and Western response was swift and unified, with sanctions against Russia and aide to Ukraine. Music administrators around the world also got into the game, firing Valery Gergiev, Anna Netrebko and Denis Matsuyev from main stages and theaters of Europe and America after they refused to sign letters condemning Putin’s invasion. While we find these artists’ support of Putin and his regime reprehensible, we are somewhat ambivalent about what seems like a mob action against them. On the one hand we’re glad to see Gergiev gone (we also happen to think that he is overrated as conductor). But Gergiev has been close to Putin for decades. Why didn’t we see any action when Putin illegally annexed Ukrainian Crimea, with Gergiev’s full-throated support? Putin has committed war crimes before: he was the main enabler of Syria’s dictator Assad, and it was his, Putin’s, warplanes that bombed hospitals in Aleppo. Why wasn’t Gergiev fired back then? Is it because Syrian lives matter less than Ukrainian? As for Netrebko, she did support Putin’s 2014 invasion of Ukraine, but it seems that her main fault is that Putin likes her a lot. Netrebko was not the only one who supported Putin back in 2014: more than five hundred (!) Russian cultural luminaries signed a letter in support of the annexation of Crimea, the famous violist Yuri Bashmet and violinist Vladimir Spivakov among them. Since the current war had started, Spivakov and several other signed a meek letter against it, but not Bashmet. Will all “unrepented” musicians be banned from playing in the West? As we noted above, we don’t have a strong opinion about actions against Putin’s artists but find several things troubling. Is it OK to require political loyalty (or, in this case, disloyalty) statements from artists? Why do we treat artist differently, and in a seemingly arbitrary way? Of course, these questions have been asked before, when ardent Hitler’s supporters and Nazi party members Herbert von Karajan and Karl Böhm were quickly denazified and then accepted in the West while clearly not as culpable Wilhelm Furtwängler was not. All this pales compared to the war catastrophe and Putin’s evil, but the question of artists, politics and ethics are important and we’ll have to deal with them in years to come.
Several great composers were born this week, among them Maurice Ravel, Arthur Honegger and Hugo Wolf. We’ll get back to them at a later date.