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From La Scena Musicale
http://www.scena.org/brand/brand.asp?lan=2&id=58307&lnk=http://www.scena.org/columns/lebrecht/081016-NL-Gergiev.html


Gergiev is selling us short

By Norman Lebrecht / October 16, 2008




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Valery Gergiev is conducting a concert for peace in Jerusalem this weekend. The month before last, he gave a victory concert for the Kremlin armies in south Ossetia.

In his own mind, there will be no contradiction. Gergiev, whom I have known longer than any writer outside Russia, has an extraordinary ability to compartmentalise. An emotional man, not prone to profound reflection, he functions on a principle of needs must, and on the ends justifying those primary needs

His first loyalty, he has told me several times, is to the Caucasian region of his birth. When the Georgians violated Ossetia’s borders and oppressed its people, he rushed to support Vladimir Putin’s Russian army, which was lying in wait to reassert its power.

His second loyalty is to the Mariinsky, formerly Kirov theatre, which he has led as general and artistic director since 1988 and upheld as Russia’s only performing ensemble of international status. That commitment requires him to maintain an uncritical friendship with Putin, who helped out when he was deputy mayor of St Petersburg in the early 1990s.

Gergiev denies excessive closeness to the former Russian president, now prime minister, but there is no masking his admiration for what, in a recent interview, he described as the leader’s restoration of Russian self-respect. A strong country means a strong Mariinsky. Gergiev is building a second opera house in St Petersburg. No further questions.

The Mariinsky has opened a ballet and opera season at Sadler’s Wells this week, with Gergiev conducting Wednesday night before flying off to Jerusalem. His peace concert there is sponsored by an ex-Soviet oligarch, Arcady Gaydamak, who is presently on trial in Paris on charges of smuggling arms to Angola.

Among alleged oligarch crimes, sending a ship full of Kalashnikovs and helicopters to a war zone amounts to a minor misdemeanour beside their wholesale despoilation of the Russian economy, and while Gaydamak is decidedly nouveau rouble riche he has given lavishly to local charities. He has just launched an election campaign to become mayor of Jerusalem and the concert will be seen as its centrepiece. Gergiev, for his part, is not bothered. He is neither picky about old friends, nor ever disloyal.

Take Alberto Vilar, the fallen dotcom investor who donated $200 million to opera houses. Vilar has been walking free on half a million dollars of bail put up by Gergiev when he was arrested in New Jersey on charges of defrauding private clients. In a trial that began a fortnight ago, the prosecution is looking for a 20-year sentence. Next time Gergiev turnbs up at the Metropolitan Opera, where he has been principal guest conductor for ten years, he may get called as a character witness.

Amid his whirlygig schedule and dubious friends, it is easy to forget that Gergiev. 55, is one of the most incandescent conductors alive, capable when the spirit is upon him of producing performances that can only be described as epic. He has a natural authority with orchestras, a sensitive concern for soloists and an intensity that defies belief. Anyone who heard the Tchaikovsky Pathetique that he gave in Vienna on the night of the Beslan massacre, or some of the Prokofiev operas and symphonies that he retrieved from oblivion, will have felt passages of music seared forever on their soul.

However, it is also easy to forget that Gergiev is supposed to be principal conductor of the London Symphony Orchestra. The LSO used to be London’s top draw. No longer. At the South Bank, the London Philharmonic has rejuvenated its concerts under two thirty-something conductors, Vladmir Jurowski and Yannick Nezet-Seguin, while the Philharmonia has received a much-needed glamour infusion from the ex-LA maestro Esa-Pekka Salonen. Against stiffened competition, the LSO has allowed itself to become an unprotected subsidiary and bag-carrier of Gergiev Global.

Last season the LSO performed a cycle of Mahler symphonies which was not just uncalled for but positively perverse in that the conductor had nothing new to say. Beautifully played and, on the whole, warmly received by a subscription audience, it substituted gesture for substance and left a sour aftertaste on record. I understand that Gergiev was asked to diversify the programme, but insisted on Mahler as of right.

This season – this week, in fact - he is repeating a Prokofiev set with the LSO that he did this summer in Edinburgh with the Kirov, along with selection of Rachmaninov, Bartok, Korngold and Stravinsky that have been grouped together under the guise of an ‘Émigré’ season of ‘emigration and displacement’.

There is no apparent reasoning behind this title and no content that relates it to the real lives of tens of thousands of war-torn and political refugees who live in the city from which the LSO takes its name. There is no Handel, no Gounod, no Goldschmidt, no Panufnik, no Firsova, not one of dozens of composers dead or still living for whom London is a haven from intolerable regimes. The LSO Émigré season looks like an empty shell, devoid of social and intellectual context and designed for the convenience of a high-flying conductor whose mind is often elsewhere.

In case I hadn’t made it clear, I am a longterm admirer of Gergiev’s and personally very fond of the man. His emotional transparency is genuine and his human instincts are generally sound. There are performers in his entourage who would not get a second date from tougher maestros, but Gergiev does not drop musical casualties by the wayside; where possible, he nurses them back to health.

As far as the LSO is concerned, however, he is dispensing no favours. The orchestra’s brand is being damaged by attachment to Gergiev Global. Will anyone remember who played last month’s Rachmaninov Festival? Was it the Kirov, the Met, the Vienna Phil or the World Orchestra for Peace? When Andre Previn conducted Rachmaninov in the 1960s, the whole world knew it was with the LSO. Now all they recognise is Gergiev.

The LSO has survived for a century on swagger and self-interest. It needs now to put its fly-by-night conductor on the spot. Why are we playing this music? Who is it for? Where and how does it benefit the LSO in London’s competitive cauldron? These are not questions that Valery Gergiev has ever faced. I hope he has a convincing answer.

I'm not a big fan of Lebrecht but I read him because I occasionally find his writing provocative and interesting. But I can't understand what his problem is with Gergiev and the LSO by the questions he asks in the above quoted text. Unless I'm missing something, I don't think Gergiev would either.

Lebrecht is usually a writer with a point to make, but I can't see one here. Instead of condemming Gergiev on political grounds, he condemms him for being ambitious!

Well, excuse me while I turn the lights on!

Gergiev can be criticized for being over-extended, or for his "finger-painting" technique, certainly, and for performances that happen without sufficient rehearsal, but to criticize a conductor for being ambitious is just silly, in my book.

If Lebrecht wants to criticize Gergiev, let him do so on his results, or for his politics, or not at all.

Typical Lebrecht tosh. Nobody forgets that Gergiev is a special conductor, and only Lebrecht knows or cares about his "dubious friends."

Not so. I began a thread here a while back that sparked some discussion, in which I resisted the idea that genius is above morality, for which Gergiev's Ossetian triumphalistic concert was the occasion. If you have no concern for "dubious friends" that's a matter for you, of course. But it leads me to ask: would you draw the line anywhere before "dubious friends" become a problem, for example Furtwaengler and Goebbels? Or is it simply a case of only music matters, and if he gets rid of all his Jews or Georgians, well the orchestra still sounds ok so that's fine?

We might differ about what constitutes reprehensible behaviour, or reprehensible associations, but to suggest it is simply irrelevant seems to me quite a failing.

In Furtwangler's case it is well known that he did his best to keep Jewish musicians in the BPO, and when that became impossible, he did what he could to help them avoid persecution at great risk to himself. A person of lesser stature would have been sent to the camps. His anti-establishment posture placed him squarely within Himmler's hit list and at the end of the war he was fortunate to escape to Switzerland with his life. It was impossible for him to avoid contact with Goebbels and other high ranking Nazis while he remained chief conductor of the BPO.

Ok, maybe a poor example. It seems Furtwangler was more moral than Gergiev then. The point - to me- is that we are moral agents before we are musicians. We have a moral duty before we have a musical duty. This may be too high flown, but I felt John Francis was wrong on two counts - it is not "tosh" and some people do care. A third and perhaps arguable count: More people should.

To draw such a line at all I must be satisfied that I really know enough, and am fair-minded enough, to ascend to the seat of moral judgment. I'm not easily satisfied about that.

To turn the question back to you: pizza has pointed out that your moral judgment on Furtwängler is unjust because uninformed or misinformed. So I think it's fair to ask what you demand of yourself before sitting in moral judgment of others. And how much it matters to you that in this case at least, your judgment has been unjust.


Let's explore this with a much more clearcut example than Furtwängler, the Venetian composer Carlo Gesualdo, who murdered his wife and her lover. No doubt murder is a bad thing, and no doubt Gesualdo had a moral duty not to murder people; as for his musical duty, to use your words, he had no such duty (I've no idea what a "musical duty" might be), he was an amateur composer who happened to write extraordinary music. But seriously, why does Gesualdo matter to us at all, nearly 400 years after his death, and what matters to us about him? His music, of course. Nothing else.

Under the circumstances, it would seem to me peculiar at the least to rise up and proclaim a moral judgment against Gesualdo: he was a bad man, a criminal, what you will. Of course he was, but so what? Who really cares, and why should they care? How is it relevant to what we do care about, his music? These are not rhetorical questions, and not an invitation to construct an intricate reasoned general argument one way or the other. I just want to know how you feel about Gesualdo.

Suppose, on the other hand, that Valery Gergiev were to murder his wife and three children, open and shut case, no Agatha Christie surprise denouement ("The butler did it"). We would naturally expect him to be dealt with under the laws of whatever jurisdiction applies, which I don't believe excuse murders by orchestral conductors. But what Lebrecht condemns him for is so flimsy or dubious - tosh, as I said - even if true, which with Lebrecht you can't assume, that I say again, who really cares? And why do they, or should they?

Not referring to you specifically, I'd like to point out that that is the fundamental moral problem of our age. Nobody's willing to take a stand for fear of being wrong, and rather than be wrong, they watch as moral rot and crippling equivocation pervades the public sphere. IMO it's evil itself to be so ambivalent and tolerant in the face of obvious evil.

"Obvious evil"? Give me an example of what you consider "obvious evil" in the real world about which people really are "ambivalent and tolerant," because I really don't know what you have in mind.

I didn't mean to recant as much as I might have implied. Bohm might have been a better example among those still regarded as great who dallied with the Nazis. Pizza is right that Furtwaengler is not a simple case, but his summary merely points the rosy side. It matters a lot to me that I have been unjust with people who can be affected by my judgement. Gergiev isn't one really, but I don't think I have been unjust. I have gone to the trouble of doing a bit of research, and I think he is a moral pygmy. And that matters to me at least somewhat. I'll take up your other point below.

A moral duty is something we acquire by being part of the human community. A musical duty is that sense of obligation to the art held, often intensely, by by musicians and composers. I'm a journalist, and I have an ethical duty to journalism which is part of my ethical duty as part of the community. In my case, it involves such things as an obligation not to deliberately mislead, not to misrepresent people, to seek truth and fairness etc. Obviously we all have such duties, but journalists can do a lot of damage. The unstated background to my comment about musical duties being secondary is the idea - surprisingly common - that great artists are not subject to the same moral constraints and obligations as lesser mortals.

An example of where I have trouble separating the man from his music is Wagner - an exploitative, self-obsessed, megalomaniac, anti-semitic nasty piece of work who happened to be a genius. I feel some of the negative side of the force of his personality in his music, and thus feel ambivalent about its power to move me. I suspect to you this is more "tosh".

I'm with Corlyss on this. I know that great damage can be done by insensitive judgmentalism, by the rush to negative judgment against which you cautioned. That's an important aspect. But it seems to me the pendulum has actually swung the other way today, at least in Australia. So here's an example. Victoria where I live has just passed a law decriminalising abortion. I say nothing about the right or wrong of that - it's an immensely complex area in which my conflicted private feelings are not particularly relevant. But part of that bill is a clause making it a legal requirement for doctors who believe abortion is murder to refer women considering abortion to people who do not, despite their clear conviction (on the teaching of the Catholic church) that such referrals are co-operating in evil, though not all such opponents are Catholics. The Australian Medical Association, a secular professional association also opposed this clause. In other words, despite no demonstration of a problem requiring a solution (that women were being deprived of abortions by anti-abortion doctors) their freedom of conscience is being abused by law. Even worse, from my point of view, Liberty Victoria (which aims to protect civil rights and has often done important work) ditched the doctors and endorsed the law. In other words, freedom of conscience only applies if it is politically correct.

This to me is an example of an obvious evil in the real world about which people really are ambivalent and tolerant. A comparatively minor example, perhaps, to many. But compulsion of conscience over a matter of core moral convictions is an obvious evil.

This is a long way from music, and perhaps this is the wrong place for such a discussion. But you did ask.

PS: I blogged on this on my own blog, and quite a lively discussion ensued that is now approaching 200 posts. It's not appropriate to push my (non-musical) blog here, but if anyone does want to follow it up, message me and I will send the url.

You're entitled to your opinion, of course. I'd agree that this provision of the law is insensitive to some doctors' personal moral feelings, which might have been given greater recognition and respect. What's the punishment for disobeying the law, by the way? A fine, imprisonment, disqualification?

But I disagree that this is a case of obvious evil. In the first place, for an evil or anything else to be "obvious," it must be self-evident to just about everybody. And it's far from self-evident that requiring a doctor to give a patient appropriate and quite legal professional advice of whatever kind, though the doctor finds that particular kind of advice morally repugnant, is truly "evil."

The doctor, and you, may think this law to be evil, and believe its evil to be obvious. But for anything to be truly obvious there must be wide if not universal agreement on it, without substantial controversy. How else can it be called obvious? You've chosen a highly controversial issue - as is everything to do with abortion - and moreover, you and the doctor are evidently in the minority, since after all we're not talking about an arbitrary executive decree but a law enacted by a majority of legislators each of whom was elected by a majority vote. Under the circumstances, "obvious" is not just an overstatement but a misstatement.

Let me be clear about this. I'm not saying that real evil does not exist, or that it may never be obvious in the proper meaning of that word. I'm saying we must not indulge in loose talk, claiming that what we feel to be evil is "obviously" evil as a rhetorical tactic for shaming or silencing those who may disagree, though they may have good reasons for doing so.

A good reason for disagreeing with your view of the new law might run like this. Whether a killing is murder is defined by criminal law, and today the law defines abortion as not murder. Doctors are entitled to their personal moral feelings and standards, whatever these may be, but when these conflict with their professional public responsibilities, not to mention the law, they're faced with a difficult choice: obey their conscience or obey the law. And it's not always the law that's wrong and the conscience that's right. This is not evil, it's life.

If you want an example of obvious evil, how about slavery? That slavery is not just bad but evil is surely an uncontroversial, universal view in our time, hence truly obvious. Torture would likewise appear to be an obvious evil, and I think that's right; some individuals and governments (including, shamefully, our own) actually use torture, but nobody denies that it is evil, instead they deny that they're doing it, or try to redefine "torture" to exempt what they're doing. No doubt there are more evils that are obvious enough to add to this list, but perhaps fewer than you and Corlyss might believe. As for the rest, calling something obviously evil doesn't make it so, however strong one's feelings about it.

(How can this be the wrong place for such a discussion? After all, one of the moderators brought it up. )

I'm afraid that Stormin' Norman has become borin' Norman.
He just opens his mouth and prattles on meaninglessly.
He will take pot shots at virtually any famous living classical musician without the slightes regard for fairness or accuracy.
Gergiev may be erratic at times, but any one who denies that he's one of the greatest living conductors is a ninny.
How can any one take this clown Lebrecht seriously an more ?