Valery Gergiev is named Russia’s creative person of the year
NewsTass reports from Moscow:
The winners of the Russian Creative Awards (RCA), a national award for the creative industries, have been announced in Moscow, including Artistic Director and General Director of the Mariinsky Theater Valery Gergiev, entrepreneur Alisher Usmanov and singer Yaroslav Dronov (Shaman).
Valery Gergiev, conductor, artistic director and general director of the Mariinsky Theater, received the cherished “Person of the Year” nomination. The platform for gamers, developers and content authors VK Play was recognized as the “Discovery of the Year”. “Patron of the Year” was Alisher Usmanov – entrepreneur, founder of the charitable foundation “Art, Science and Sport“.
Irony just died, again.
This does seem a bit of a joke. I have very few Gergiev records. Just comparing his recording of Rachmaninov’s first symphony with the LSO with Vasily Petrenko’s and the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic’s, I found Gergiev’s account flaccid lethargic and laking in energy, whereas Petrenko’s is full of bite, drive and rhythmic energy and is a fine account.
I just heard Vasily Petrenkos Walton First Symphony in Cleveland and it had all the characteristics you mention. And it had the Cleveland Orchestra….
He ‘conducted’ Wagner’s Das Rheingold, as part of an unstaged 4 year-long cycle, at The Edinburgh Festival, in about 2014. It was under-rehearsed, sloppy and so much poorer than the subsequent parts of the cycle, which have become legendary, all conducted by Sir Andrew Davis, a far from renowned Wagnerian. Gergiev was massively over-rated, over-paid and too often over here …
All that was missing was another press release denouncing post-humously, Rostropovich and Shostakovich as well as a runner-up mini toothpick award for currentzis.
As Gergiev is now confined to Russia the Russians can give him any award they like
Why not “Person of the Century”? Go the whole hog, as it were, to honor his services to Putin.
And will be allowed to shoot with Dzerdzhinsky’s handgun, as the old Soviet joke ran.
“… I’ve got a little list — I’ve got a little list / Of society offenders who might well be underground / And who never would be missed — who never would be missed!”
And Gergiev’s on my list
“Cherished” by Putinites only.