Now I am curious.

Who's the stand-in for Lisitsa?

 Kuma,

If I am not mistaken they are substituting a beard for a blond. He was approved after being vetted by the anti-Putin music board.

http://tso.ca/en-ca/concerts-a...campaign=1415tickets

Stewart Goodyear - clean shaven and a chrome-dome.  

Jukka-Pekka Saraste may be sporting a beard these days though.

Not a bad deal for Lisitsa though who gets an easy pay day out of this.

I am not sure why everyone gets up in arms over a public figure that voices an 'opinion.'  You can't please everyone.  If she would support the Ukrainian side then she would surly offend many from the pro-Russian side.  And besides, why would someone's opinion effect our reception of the music she plays in her day job.   Music and politics do not mix or have anything to do with one another.   

Would anyone care if she thought these views but remained silent on matter?  Probably not.  At least she is honest about her views.

oh bummer.

Would have been better off with Lisitsa over Goodyear. 

Can anyone provide a direct link to the specific things she tweeted that TSO objected to? I'd like to know exactly what she said.

More from The Globe and Mail.

Let Valentina Play!

I must say it does not reflect good on TSO. But TSO is a private organisaion. They can do whatever they want from moral and financial stand point.  

My cynical side tells me tho, she might have did it to stir up the social media as her career seems to be built on.

Here's what she has to say about it.

Seeing that there aren't many response to this thread, there isn't much interest in this topic on this board.

Here's latest The Toronto Star article about it.

TSO sets a dangerous precedent:

Kuma,

I get an error message when I try your link.

Thanks Joe.

Now try.

Hey at least someone is following the story.

That's working. Thanks

Hi Kuma, have been following. Other fora show how many views a topic gets. Difficult to comment as our news media mostly tell us what we're supposed to hear, same as in Russia I suppose. Tend not to believe what I read esp after Iraq/WMD and feel just as inclined to follow news on RT and others to get some kind of overall picture. I get the truth from mybriks.com! (Thanks)

What are the musicians of the Toronto Symphony Orchestra doing in the meantime? Closing their Tweeter accounts to be on the safe side? No letters of protest to the management from them or any other symphonies? The world of music is full of wimps.

It would be interesting to view the list of the major donors to the TSO, see if the pressure to shut up Listisa came from there.

Haim,

It's only logical that protest came from a major donor of the TSO. 

It would be very naive to think they did it only for the moral and political ground knowing they might risk future ticket sales. 

This reminds me of Gieseking incident in the US which happened back in 1949. The management at Carnegie was forced to cancel his concert ( and US tour ). 

SAT,

Thanks for your kind words. If you are a Briks owner do send your pix and profile. <-----shameless plug.

Music and politics are impossible to separate.

For example after 1945 the BBC would not invite Wilhelm Furtwangler to direct its BBC Symphony Orchestra, while Sir Adrian Boult was given the principle conductorship of the Vienna Philharmonic. It may seem surprised to find that Boult was well liked by the VPO and the relationship lasted many years after Boult was released from the VPO directorship, and even resulted in some rather fine gramophone recordings during the 1950s. 

In 1948 the Chicago Symphony Orchestra was forced to withdraw their invitation to Furtwangler to become chief conductor, and so on ...

Artists of often pin their colours to a political mast simply by practicing within a country with a certain government. For example Mravinsky was chief conductor of the Leningrad Philharmonic for decades including the Stalin era. Without question he did not manage to stay at the top in the USSR without a certain point of view on Stalinism.

Klemperer made a mistake in that he frequently visited Russia during that era, and therefore was regarded as suspect in the USA as a communist sympathiser . In Germany [after 1945] Klemperer initially had a great problem returning to his home even after the War because he had left Germany as a Jew in 1933! It seems that if Klemperer had decided to stay and get put in a concentration camp, he would not have to face that situation off ... Only in England was Klemperer accepted as first and foremost a musician, and politically suspect second! 

For this reason Klemperer kept his main artistic effort based in London, and his Germany and Austrian work was very much less than it might have been. For example it seems that Klemperer gave only eighteen concerts with the VPO in his whole life - a cause of regret to both him and the orchestra. Politics again. 

Casals was a Republican in the Spanish Civil War situation, and thus he left Spain permanently once Franco became Dictator.

Though these are musical examples there are many many cases affecting all branches of the arts ...

ATB from George

Music and politics do not mix or have anything to do with one another. 

Try telling that to Ewan McColl, Peggy Seeger, Joan Baez, Billy Bragg, Crass, New Model Army, Jello Biafra/Dead Kennedys and many, many more!

steve

NOw that's interesting I did not know that.

Since when has a concert hall become a venue for political statements?  Valentina Lisitsa is fully entitled to her personal views without the idiotic intrusion by thought police, special interest groups, political correctness enforcers let alone individuals with lofty opinions.  

It is quite simple - Valentina Lisitsa was hired to come and play music - not give a political lecture.  If anyone has such a vaulted opinions that are never wrong then those people should just stay home and only listen to people who share your own narrow views?  Keep your nose on your own face, so to speak.  

What have we become?  Should we be checking the backgrounds of people who play the piano or wave a stick along with the guy in the back row who plays the triangle and maybe the janitor who cleans up too.  Why don't we censor who can walk in to a concert hall to listen or a library or a museum?  Maybe we should start burning books again and hunting people down that voice certain views and burn them at the stake in Salem.

Sadly, the TSO is not alone in the world today where the squeaky voices of the few drive the bus and force the decisions.  Only those with ulterior motives would prefer to tie music and politics together.  This is a man made outcome if anything.   Music and politics are not natural bedfellows by any means nor should they be.

 Music and politics are not natural bedfellows by any means nor should they be.

But music and politics have been inextricably linked since the day the very first marching tune was commissioned by a tribal leader ...

Whether this is a good thing is for each to decide for themselves, but it is a fact that spans millennia. 

Like music, it also a man-made construct, but so is morality.

ATB from George

Read Sam Shirakawa, "The Devil's Music Master," Oxford University Press. A biography of Furtwangler that is sympathetic to the conductor. It reveals the earlier difficulties that the BBC had in denying Furtwangler access to the BBC Symphony Orchestra as well as the difficulties involved in Furtwangler performing in former German occupied territories.

The 1948 Chicago Affair as it was known, was the result of the large Jewish cadre who subscribed to the Chicago Orchestra, and who certainly controlled the finances of the band. They could have shut down the orchestra had the board not backed down to pressure. At the time Furtwangler had not been re-instated to principle conductor of the BPO, which post he only re-assumed in 1952, when the situation in Allied Occupied Germany had calmed down enough to allow that the former chief conductor for life could resume his position for just two years as it turned out.

I recommend that book, though the style is not all that easily readable.

ATB from George

Dear Kuma,

Another brave example of political statement by a great musical artist was Flagstaff refusing to perform in public in Nazi-occupied Norway after she gave up her career to return to her family. Two sacrifices in one go, and the only political statement she could make without being interned, and probably shot for her pains.

ATB from George

Morality - man made?  I am afraid we will have to disagree on this as well.  When man gets involved and messes everything up, this should not be confused with a definition of morality.  

Music is a gift or a tool, depending on how you use it or who is behind it.  The music I listen to simply has no context or platform for political speech or interests.  If it did, I somehow doubt I would listen to music or be interested in it any longer.

I know what you are saying George as well as others and it is very clear that the more people that are involved the more the ugliness surfaces and destroys what is good.  Fortunately, I am quite content with just a personal journey with music and by my own choosing, my musical experiences are only about music.  My statements above reflect my own views.

Doug,

You will have to show which other specie considers a moral code in its behaviour. Morality is indeed not only a man-made construct, but it is a construct only followed by some of mankind. All other behaviour is simply a question of evolutionary survival ...

All music has an agenda, often overtly political, even the Christian music of JS Bach. If that rules it out, then that is that.

George

It seems like musicians and not only donors had an input in the Furtwangler affair.

"The violinist Yehudi Menuhin was, with Arnold Schoenberg, Bronisław Huberman and Nathan Milstein, among the Jewish musicians who had a positive view of Furtwängler. In 1933 Menuhin had refused to play with him, but in the late 1940s, after a personal investigation of Furtwängler, he changed his opinion, and performed and recorded alongside him.^[136]

Yehudi Menuhin sent a wire to General Robert A. McClure in February 1946:

Unless you have secret incriminating evidence against Furtwängler supporting your accusation that he was a tool of Nazi Party, I beg to take violent issue with your decision to ban him. The man never was a Party member. Upon numerous occasions, he risked his own safety and reputation to protect friends and colleagues. Do not believe that the fact of remaining in one's own country is alone sufficient to condemn a man. On the contrary, as a military man, you would know that remaining at one's post often requires greater courage than running away. He saved, and for that we are deeply his debtors, the best part of his own German culture... I believe it patently unjust and most cowardly for us to make of Furtwängler a scapegoat for our own crimes. If the man is guilty of specific crimes, accuse him and convict him. As far as I can see, it is no punishment to be banned from sordid, filthy Berlin and if the man now old and ill is willing and anxious to return to his exacting task and responsibilities he should be encouraged for that is where he belongs, right in Berlin...^[137]

In 1949 Furtwängler accepted the position of principal conductor of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra. However the orchestra was forced to rescind the offer under the threat of a boycott from several prominent musicians including Arturo Toscanini, George Szell, Vladimir Horowitz, Arthur Rubinstein, Isaac Stern and Alexander Brailowsky.^[138] According to a New York Times report, Horowitz said that he "was prepared to forgive the small fry who had no alternative but to remain and work in Germany." But Furtwängler "was out of the country on several occasions and could have elected to keep out".^[138] Rubinstein likewise wrote in a telegram, "Had Furtwängler been firm in his democratic convictions he would have left Germany".^[138] Yehudi Menuhin was upset with this boycott, declaring that some of the main organizers had admitted to him that they had organized it only to eliminate Furtwängler's presence in North America."^{[137] (Wikipedia)}

Dear Haim,

It shows that I am not scouting the internet for my understanding that I remembered wrongly the date as 1948 rather than 1949.

As for Menuhin, I cannot share his sympathetic view of Furtwangler, who had so many opportunities to declare what he did to serve the aims of, or what he privarly thought of, his Nazi masters. He could have left on any of his visits to neutral territories with the BPO or VPO. He chose to accept that he was unable to perform the degenerate music of Mendelssohn in Germany as a small sacrifice to preserve his own career. Of course he and Menuhin made a recording the famous Mendelssohn Violin Concerto that only compounds Furtwangler's ability to be a weak, moral-free hypocrite, but that is how it goes.

As Menuhin said after his infamous 1947 performance of Beethoven's Violin Concerto [in the Tatiana Palast] with the BPO under Furtwangler, [to paraphrase without reference to the original] "I came down from the peak as Jewish traitor." Quite right too.

ATB from George

Wrong. I think it was incredibly brave of Menuhin to do what he thought was the right thing. Not for you to judge him, George. And that is all I have to say about this topic.

EJ