We have seen plenty of movies about life in a dictatorship, but this video shows you the real thing. A well-known Russian pianist, Alexei Lubimov, announced a concert a few months ago. He planned to play a work by a famous Ukrainian composer, Valentin Silvestrov, and another by Schubert.
As he was playing, with great brilliance, the police arrived to stop the concert. The pianist insisted on finishing the piece he was playing. As the two policemen stood there, the audience applauded vigorously. Then the police told him they had reports of a bomb on the premises, and they had to stop the performance until bomb-sniffing dogs arrived. The dogs arrived two hours later.
The concert was stopped.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
I must say…some of your stories are rather lopsided. What about articles describing how Russian artists have been denied performing in Europe? Or tennis players not being allowed to participate in Wimbledon? We keep hearing that sports and politics don’t mix – depending on who is the doing the mixing, right? This IDIOCY is going too far. How about denying American artists to perform anywhere on this planet??? After all the misery and pain the US has inflicted on so many SMALLER nations? Cowards.
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I don’t agree with the policy of cultural institutions to ban performers who are Russian. I do think that Putin is a war criminal and should be prosecuted. I know you are in Europe, Vera, but I wish you had seen the story about Mariupol on PBS News this evening. The entire city, once beautiful, has been reduced to rubble. Civilian residences were destroyed. Bodies lay in the streets for weeks. I’m sorry for the people of Mariupol, as well as the Russian soldiers, BUt thousands of lives were lost because of the ego of one sick man
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Considering the Russian things that Western countries have banned lately – everything from Tchaikovsky to Dostoevsky to vodka to Russian athletes to Russian cats to Russian trees – I’m thinking maybe people in glass houses shouldn’t throw stones. Frankly, banning music or any such cultural things is ridiculous, but there’s that line about removing the log from your own eye….
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You are correct that it would be the height of hypocrisy for anyone who defends the murderous authoritarian Putin so rabidly to complain about anything the Democrats do.
And yet…..
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NYCPSP, now that was a pithy and effective response.
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A sniper’s rifle is more effective than a shotgun blast. Just ask the guy Dick Cheney shot in the face. Same with writing (hypocrite that I am).
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I read a recent piece that revealed rasPutin the Terrible is making all the battlefield decisions for the Russian Army in Ukraine.
rasPutin the Terrible has never served in the military. rasPutin the Terrible knows nothing about military tactics yet he’s making all the decisions and when the Russian army fails with horrible losses, rasPutin the Terrible blames his generals and fires them or worse.
rasPutin the Terrible is ignoring all the rules of military tactics and he’s ordering his troops into wood chippers and meat grinders that professionally trained, seasoned generals would never do.
Adolf Hitler did the same thing during Word War II. He ignored the advice of his real generals. rasPutin the Terrible is going to lose this war just like Hitler lost his war leaving behind nothing but death and destruction.
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Lloyd,
Thank you. Hahaha…rasPutin.
You are right.
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“Playing outlawed tunes…on outlawed pipes. It was the same for me and your daddy…when our father was killed.”
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X ..x. z bXm , -x nb
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Maybe The NRA will act like Putin KGB and SHUT themselves down. They certainly should. TX Anti-Democracy Abbott should tell the NRA to close their tents and leave Texas. BECAUSE..
Uvalde Texas has lost children and adults in yet another Mass School Shooting.
The NRA has no business in Texas May 2022. PLEASE call for the NRA To
“SHUT IT DOWN!”
2022 Annual NRA Bloodbath.
George R. Brown Convention Center May 27-29
Where Else But Houston, Texas!
If they don’t, USA citizens absolutely will.
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Greatest profile pic ever, Ms. Irwin!
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It is perfectly reasonable to sanction a country that is engaged in murdering another country’s civilians. It is completely unreasonable to shut down all dissent. I was wondering, after Diane’s post appeared, how long it would take for the Putin apologists to respond. These are not equivalent. Anyone who thinks they are equivalent is sick and clueless or in the employee of the idiotic, incompetent, servile, creepy Putin disinformation machine.
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Gee, let me go onto Diane’s blog and root for the people who are raping Ukrainian women and girls and murdering Ukrainian grandmothers and babies. Disgusting.
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Of these people, I can say only this, the same thing I said after Newtown: If the murder of babies doesn’t move them, what will?
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Sick. Completely sick.
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cx: in the employ of
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Well Schubert was Austrian and Austro-Hungarian empire did later wage war against Russia in 1914, so it is perfectly justifiable for Russia to ban Schubert, whose pieces literally ooze rabid Russophobia (particularly the woodwind and brass sections, which would like nothing more than to spit on Russian soil,)
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Music holds a much more prominent social role in Russia than in most cultures, as can be seen in this video. Perhaps there is no better example of this than the role Dmitri Shostakovich played in the history of the Soviet Union. He was his country’s most significant living artist and persecuted and revered simultaneously. His 4th symphony was personally denounced by Stalin and Shostakovich believed he was destined for the gulags. The first movement of the 7th symphony, Leningrad, musically brings to life what it means to live in a city under siege. His 9th symphony was anticipated by the authorities to be a grand expression of victory over Nazi Germany and instead turned out to be a short, light piece that thumbed his nose at Stalin and brought him further persecution. His 10th, an angry, explosive piece is in response to Stalin’s death and is described by the Cleveland Orchestra’s Franz Welser-Möst as “perhaps Shostakovich’s most personal utterance about his own lack of freedom.
The music of Valentin Silvestrov, Ukraine’s greatest living composer, is also worth noting. His journey to safety was documented by the NYT in March. Earlier this year I attended a Cleveland Institute of Music orchestra, arguably the best classical music school in the nation that played an obscure song of his. The conductor, Carlos Kalmar, explained that they decided to replace a scheduled Ives piece, The Unanswered Question, as he pointed to the Ukrainian flag next to the American on the side of the stage. He told of how the evening’s music reflected much of the mood about Ukraine, but since they didn’t have a Ukrainian song on the playlist, he asked a student of theirs from Ukraine what he thought. According to the student, the Ives piece was very appropriate but lamented that they couldn’t find an appropriate piece by a Ukrainian composer. Kalmar then described how, in the course of less than a week, his students scoured the internet and found a piece that had not been recorded, by living composer Valentyn Silvestrov, called Prayer for Ukraine. Before they played it, Kalmar asked that the audience not applaud but instead sit in respectful silence. There weren’t many dry eyes in the house when they finished. It is unfathomable to me that it has not been recorded. Perhaps it has recently.
Below are two versions. I begin every day with one of them.
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WordPress won’t post songs (Russian hackers?). You can YouTube search Silvestrov Prayer for Ukraine. One is an instrumental version of the Bamberg Symphony conducted by Jakub Hrusa, the other a choral version by the Warsaw Symphony Choir.
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