Russia’s budget for 2015 Tchaikovsky competition
UncategorizedThe Russian prime minister Dmitri Medvedev has published an authorisation for the next Tchaikovsky international competition, taking place in June-July 2015. The sum of 40 million rubles has been allocated for budget year 2014 and 300 million for 2015 – equivalent to $85 million.
Bigger than Van Cliburn?
It’s 8.3 million US dollars (300 million rubles)
Russia uses its art to legitimize an authoritarian, undemocratic regime. We know such things from history.
Maybe is better “democratic” closing the music schools, orchestras, operas? Would be nice to try once this kind of undemocratic budget in musical art..really..
I wouldn’t bother taking John’s trolling seriously :))
Why this obsession with trolls? Is the subject too difficult?
Well, there still are some countries with such societies… apart from Russia, try China, or North Korea. These are the paradises on earth.
Linking Russia and China with North Korea yet again shows up John Borstlap’s utter ignorance of those countries. Has he ever visited China, I wonder? I suspect not. Well, it pulled more than 400 million people out of poverty in the space of less than 3 decades – more than at any other time in the history of our planet. Go to China, Mr. Borstlap, and be amazed at the developments around the country.
No doubt with your extreme political agenda, you will scream “human rights”! And to a certain extent you will be correct. But remember to take in other factors that make up daily life – racism, 15% of the population living in poverty, 62.8 million on food stamps, gridlocked government, relatively poor overall education rates, corporate greed on a massive scale etc. That describes part of the way of life in the United States!
Borstlap is a pathetic racist bully, who makes unsubstantiated collective-reprisal attacks on entire countries and their populations….
…. thereby ironically committing the same kind of bullying of which he accuses others. When he’s called on that, he starts yapping about “China & North Korea”, in the hope of finding a barrel in which he can blithely shoot at the fish.
See my comment somewhat below.
Stating the obvious seems to wind-up some people considerably. Critique is not necessarily sporting ‘political agendas’….. It’s quite funny, really.
The point is the financial vulnerability of classical music, of which the Tchaikovsky Competition is one of its ‘crown jewels’. It is not entertainment and never makes a profit from ticket sales, so there is always extra money needed to keep it going. This makes the art form an easy target for governments with agendas that have nothing to do with culture, either in the form of subsidy cuts (as in the Netherlands) or regime legitimization (as in Russia etc.), and where these two threats are absent as in the USA, classical music depends upon private and corporate sponsoring which, in turn, is dependent upon the health of the economy, which – in these times – is fragile as well. The European German-speaking world seems to be, at present, the only area where classical music is part of nations’ cultural identity and thus firmly subsidised and reasonably secure. Only in the USA classical music is not politicized…. because a more or less private affair. Something to ponder about.
By the way, Tchaikovsky himself, had he lived today, would have fled Russia (given the controversial law that caught Gergiev unaware), and that competition would have been dedicated to Khrennikov.
By the way, Tchaikovsky himself, had he lived today, would have fled Russia (given the controversial law that caught Gergiev unaware), and that competition would have been dedicated to Khrennikov.
Thank you for the confirmation that you are in paranormal contact with Pyotr Ilich, and that you know exactly what he would have been doing 174 years after his birth, in a hypothetical second life? And for “knowing” that today the Piano Competition “would have been dedicated to Khrennikov”, as though this is some kind of ‘fact’??
Making things up – in order to disprove them with your ‘great wisdom’ – is known as a ‘straw man argument’. You may care to Google it?
You are severely disrupting the discussion of the Tchaikovsky Piano Competition with offtopic paranoid delusion.
I see they’re hosing the trolls out from under their bridges early today?
Why? Did a gust of cold water blow you out from beneath your home this morning?
In his defence of Putin’s transgressing politics, Valery Gergiev compared the Russian’s regime financial support for classical music with the attitudes of Western politicians regarding serious music, and no single one of all the Western politicians he ever has had the opportunity to meet, had any interest in culture. Russian subsidies go into the Mariinsky in great masses, so why complain, one could say. It is exploitation of art for political gain, however, and not born from some sense of cultural responsibility. In the West, culture is increasingly seen as chique entertainment for the upper middle class, which is silly and stupid. But at least, regimes don’t have to legitimize themselves through cultural subsidies. The decrease of state support for the arts in the West, and especially classical music, is due to populism and erosion of cultural identity…. very very sad.
the Russian’s regime financial support for classical music with the attitudes of Western politicians regarding serious music, and no single one of all the Western politicians he ever has had the opportunity to meet, had any interest in culture
I’m sure you were trying hard to say something here. But no-one knows what!!
chique
Try English??
This thread is about the funding of the Tchaikovsky Piano Competition. If all you have to offer is a serious of juvenile, illiterate, ill-informed, hate-based, misspelt, offtopic diatribes about North Korea, then butt out. Clear???
Please curb the rhetoric.
Mr McGowan looks into the mirror too often…. thus his bad temper. Listening to Tchaikovsky (Symph. Pathétique last mvt) may sooth his heart ache.
What the mentioned countries have in common, apart from differences obvious to everyone, is a cultural policy that is used as a fig leaf for a totalitarian regime. For the artists concerned, this is a trap.
Gergiev used that comparison between Putin and Western politicians to show how indifferent Western politicians are, in general, to culture. The irony is like a luxurious salon where the inhabitants, secure in their position and wealth, wear jeans and smelly T-shirts, while the guests – being invited from the local prison – dress-up in gala because for them appearances should hide their background.
“What the mentioned countries have in common, apart from differences obvious to everyone, is a cultural policy that is used as a fig leaf for a totalitarian regime. For the artists concerned, this is a trap.”
You have written that in another thread. In respect of China, I have stated on the basis of many visits, many discussions with musicians, teachers and music schools, it is not true. Trolling or not, I challenge you to provide proof. Do you really assume that Lang Lang or Yundi are tools of the government? Tell that to their agents, managers and record companies in the west!
And you have never answered the question I posed earlier. Have you actually ever visited China? If so, it would be nice to know approximate dates.
First, NL’s math is incorrect: at current exchange rates, the total of 340 million rubles equals about 9.4 million US dollars or just over 7.1 million Euro – nowhere near the number given in the post above here.
Second, I as a classical musician would always prefer less music in a reasonably free life, rather than more music in an oppressively regime-controlled life. It seems to me that no matter how important classical music is to us, the way we are allowed to live our lives is still the most important consideration of all.
Amen to that!