My husband is from Ukraine, I am a Jew from Moscow. Our countries are at war.
NewsElena Dubinets, artistic director of the London Philharmonic Orchestra, has written a powerful article for the forthcoming US issue of Symphony magazine.
Among other things she says:
In a 2018 interview, Georgian composer Giya Kancheli (1935-2019) referred to the ethnopolitical conflict over Georgia’s autonomous region of South Ossetia and noted bitterly that Russia “hasn’t lost its imperial ambitions.” Ukrainian composer Leonid Hrabovsky, who lived in Moscow for nine years before emigrating to the U.S., said to me in 2018: “I don’t refer to myself as a member of the ‘Russian world.’ My attitude to its representatives entirely depends on whether or not they think that Ukrainians are a separate nation, like, let’s say, Poles or Bulgarians. Fortunately, there are many like-minded people in Russia, and a normal dialogue is not excluded. Let’s live with a hope.” This hope is disappearing in front of our eyes as Russia invades Kyiv.
My husband is from Ukraine, I am a Jew from Moscow, and our native countries are now at war. Neither of us is content with current Russian policies. Due to our entangled family history, very typical for many “Russian” families, we don’t ever say that we are Russians—and, strictly speaking, we aren’t, either by ethnicity or nationality, even though “Russian” is the label usually slapped on all former citizens of the USSR, regardless of their actual ethnicity or self-identification. The war that was recently instigated by my native country against my husband’s country is a shared tragedy of many people. It is not only a war against Ukraine; it is also a war against Europe, and against our future…
Russian music—like the Russian empire—has never been simply Russian. Even as it was wearing the patriotic trappings of official Russian nationalism, Russian music was always multiethnic and multicultural. Many of the most “Russian” composers have embodied a heady blend of ethnicities and characteristics, and the Ukrainian element has always been an important layer of Russian music. For example, Tchaikovsky wrote his Symphony No. 2 while spending a summer in Ukraine; he used three Ukrainian folk songs in it. The subtitle of the symphony—“Little Russian”—means “Ukrainian,” as “Little Russia” or “Malorus” was a term used by Russians to designate Ukraine’s territory as part of the Russian empire. Ukrainians—among them such cultural figures as Taras Shevchenko and Nikolai Gogol—have found the “Little Russian” label insulting and demeaning.
Read the full article here.
From the article:
In my 2021 book Russian Composers Abroad: How They Left, Stayed, Returned, I discuss the circumstances of many composers who, like Stravinsky, Rachmaninoff, and others, emigrated from Russian and Soviet territories during the past dozen decades. Despite a multitude of roots and influences—the border crossings, diasporic peregrinations, and homecomings inevitably affecting these composers’ creative expressions—and despite a diverse range of different ethnicities from within the former Soviet Union, these composers continue to be identified by many listeners, critics, and scholars as “Russian.”
That’s a great point about how we try to assign nationality to music, and then insist that performers of the same nationality have some kind of inherent advantage and insight when it comes to performing the music. With Rachmaninoff, for example, it does seem impossible for any one nation to claim him when you consider how nomadic he was, and that some of his best known works were composed specifically for the Philadelphia Orchestra.
Extraordinarily eloquent. Thank you for sharing, Norman.
wonderful LPO concert last night with SILVESTROV symphony 4, a dignified short speech by Saraste and the finest Sibelius 1 I have ever heard, the conductor explaining how it helped define Finnish identity, under the threat from ‘the East’
Elena writes ‘as musicians, we have the power and the responsibility to participate actively in the ongoing struggle for a better world’. Funny how like most of the classical music industry, LPO only feels that way when it’s white people being attacked. Gestures of solidarity and fundraising for Ukraine but ignoring the millions suffering and starving in Yemen, Ethiopia, Syria, Myanmar, Afghanistan and elsewhere. A better world is not one where you only care for white people, Elena. Do better.