Invite or uninvite? The music world argues about how to deal with Russian artists. After the initial polarization, a majority now advocates a sense of proportion. A return of Anna Netrebko still seems questionable.
Wrong passport? The Russian cellist Anastasia Kobekina was disinvited in Thurgau because of her citizenship.
In war, the ability to differentiate usually dies after the truth. And not only among the warring parties, but also on the part of those indirectly affected, who, in view of the events, feel compelled to take clear positions in their area of responsibility. This phenomenon can currently be observed in the international music world. She has been arguing about how to deal with Russian artists for a month.
Immediately after the attack on Ukraine, the situation seemed clear: numerous Western organizers set an example with disinvitations and terminations and ended the engagements of prominent artists who – like the conductor Valery Gergiev, the soprano Anna Netrebko and a few others – had been open for years for the neo-imperial policies of the Russian President and benefited from this partisanship. But the reactions of the music world were not so clear.
self-criticism
The industry began to ask itself critically why it hadn’t reacted earlier to the long-known questionable positions of these cultural ambassadors by the grace of Putin and sanctioned them accordingly. The answer was sobering: their allegedly indispensable artistic achievements were simply valued more than moral questions – not least in view of full houses and well-stocked coffers, which Anna Netrebko, for example, reliably ensured before 2022. Up until then, there had been just as little objection to the money from Russian oligarchs, who also supported cultural life in Switzerland with considerable sums.
The rigorism that suddenly broke out seemed hypocritical to some. Nevertheless, this moral rebound effect persists for a number of organizers – with the result that in many places the biographies of less exposed Russian artists are now being examined in detail and clear statements are being demanded. The procedure is obvious because it seems to offer the organizers a certain security against other unwelcome partisans of Putin. However, it ignores the fact that – for example due to family ties – not everyone can express themselves as clearly as the chief conductor of the Berliner Philharmoniker, Kirill Petrenko.
Immediately after the outbreak of war, Petrenko condemned the “insidious and illegal attack by Putin on Ukraine” in an official statement and described it as a “knife in the back of the whole peaceful world”. The pianist Yevgeny Kissin made a similarly determined statement in a much-noticed statement via Facebook. In it, he reminded the Russian President of his image before history, which is now forever burdened with guilt, with reference to the Nuremberg war crimes trials.
Where there is no such clear positioning or the will to make a differentiated assessment is lacking, the desire for moral clarity blossoms in a strange way. The case of the cellist Anastasia Kobekina, whose performance planned for this Saturday was canceled by the Kartause Ittingen, rightly caused a stir in Switzerland, not because Kobekina had not distanced himself from the war, but simply because of the “Russian nationality of the artist”. The political situation also requires “a clear commitment” from the organizer.
However, little was clear about this “confession”: it disregarded the attitude of Kobekina, who also spoke out emphatically against the war to the organizer. It also disregarded the biography of the artist, who appears primarily in the West – including at the Verbier and Gstaad festivals – and who received her artistic stamping in Germany at the Kronberg Academy.
The blanket justification with the “wrong” passport caused a storm of indignation and prompted several Swiss institutions to schedule alternative dates with Kobekina. She will now play the concert planned for Ittingen on the same day at the Künstlerhaus Boswil and will also hear music by the Ukrainian composer Mykola Lysenko.
open letter
The incident in Ittingen appears to be symptomatic of the suspicion that many Russian artists are currently facing and which is now also generally directed against works of Russian culture. In music, it even affects key composers such as Peter Tchaikovsky, Modest Mussorgsky and Dmitri Shostakovich, whose pieces are removed from the programs or tacitly no longer scheduled.
The Association of Swiss Professional Orchestras and the Swiss Stage Association responded in mid-March with a joint statement. In it they state: «This war is being fought in the name of Russia, but Russia is not our enemy. We do not exclude Russian artists – Russian art – across the board. We do not blame individual Russians for their government’s atrocities.” However, they refuse to “work and cooperate with those who do not support our values and publicly acknowledge the actions of their government.”
The development also called the new General Music Director of the Bavarian State Opera onto the scene. Vladimir Jurowski initiated an open letter, which since Tuesday has found more than six hundred supporters, some of whom are well-known, from the western cultural world; the first signatories include Simon Rattle, Antonio Pappano, Franz Welser-Möst and Andreas Homoki. The letter condemned with sharp words the “The ruthless war that Putin’s totalitarian regime has unleashed against sovereign Ukraine, with Russian tanks and missiles targeting innocent civilians.” In addition, the precarious situation of Ukrainian artists is remembered, for whom the war robs them of any opportunity to practice their profession and their livelihood.
At the same time, the letter also warns that “not all Russians and Belarusians and certainly not all cultural workers of these two nations” supported this “terrible invasion”. The signatories therefore consider it “unfair” to condemn them for the “actions of the dictator and his supporters in a sweeping manner when there is no direct evidence of their involvement”.
Return of Netrebko?
The names and large number of signers suggest that this position is currently shared by leaders in the western music world. However, the consensus is not unanimous. At the presentation of his program for the 2023 Salzburg Easter Festival, Nikolaus Bachler, the former Munich director, fueled a discussion that will probably stay with the music world for years to come. Bachler remarked succinctly to the Austrian “Kurier”: “Of course Anna Netrebko is welcome in Salzburg.”
However, Netrebko’s return to Western stages is by no means as “natural” as Bachler suggests. The New York Met, a fixture in Netrebko’s career with over two hundred performances to date, has suspended collaboration with the singer for this and the coming season. His manager Peter Gelb called it “unlikely” that Netrebko will ever return to the leading opera house in the USA.
In Cologne, Stuttgart, Hamburg and Regensburg, Netrebko’s performances that were planned or postponed immediately after the outbreak of war, which are also to take place in Paris, Milan and Zagreb as part of a joint tour with her Azerbaijani husband Yusif Eyvazov, are increasingly causing criticism and irritation.
Since the performances of the “classical dream couple” are mainly organized by private concert and event companies, institutions such as the Elbphilharmonie and the Cologne Philharmonic see themselves unable to prohibit the use of their houses, which had been agreed long before; they fear claims for damages.
But the pressure from politics and partly also from sponsors is increasing, as a “Spiegel” research using the example of the private “Thurn und Taxis Schlossfestspiele” in Regensburg has shown. There they are holding on to a concert by Netrebko and Eyvazof on July 22nd. However, a performance at the KKL Luzern announced by organizer Good News Productions for June 5, for which tickets were still available in mid-March, has since disappeared from the website.