The Vienna Philharmonic will complete their concert series in New York’s Carnegie Hall, which begins tomorrow, Friday, without the star conductor Valery Gergiev, who is friendly to Putin. The intended soloist of the first evening, the Russian pianist Denis Matsuev, will also be replaced. The Philharmonic and Carnegie Hall have agreed on this. Yannick Nézet-Séguin, music director of the Metropolitan Opera, takes over the baton of the Philharmonic instead of Gergiev.
The three-part concert series was criticized for Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, with 68-year-old Gergiev long considered a dedicated supporter of Russian President Vladimir Putin. He had appeared in election commercials for the Kremlin ruler or signed an open letter in 2014 supporting the annexation of Crimea.
protests by activists
Gergiev, who comes from a North Ossetian family, is also considered the most powerful figure in the Russian cultural scene, having headed the St. Petersburg Mariinsky Theater since 1996. Since the annexation of Crimea by Russia, protesters have been found again and again in front of the concert halls at Gergiev’s performances. A few Ukrainian activists also gathered in front of Carnegie Hall to protest against the Maestro – protests whose dimensions would probably have been much larger given the current development.
The Vienna Philharmonic, not the organizer of the Carnegie performances themselves, initially tried to calm down during the course of Thursday and referred to the decades-long artistic partnership with Gergiev. “Culture must not become a pawn in political disputes,” said Philharmonic board member Daniel Froschauer in a statement in which he also condemned all forms of violence and war: “For us, music always has something that connects us and not divides us.”
The Vienna Philharmonic is not the only orchestra that feels called upon to act in the face of Russian aggression. Vladimir Jurowski, Russian chief conductor of the Berlin Radio Symphony Orchestra, announced on Thursday evening that he had changed his orchestra’s planned program for the weekend. Instead of a planned purely Russian program, the Ukrainian national anthem will now be played to a melody by the composer Mychajlo Werbyzkyj and his Symphonic Overture No. 1. With the program change “we want to send a sign of solidarity with the Ukrainian people,” it said.
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