Why I cannot, in good conscience, review this record
Album Of The WeekFrom the Lebrecht Album of the Week:
I cannot, in all conscience, give this recording a star rating, or even a detailed review.
The soloist is Elisabeth Leonskaja, a legendary pianist whose introspections are perhaps the strongest living reminder of her late friend Sviatoslav RIchter. There is an organic element to Leonskaja’s playing, a lack of obvious human agency, that makes Leonskaja at once unpredictable and unarguably at the composer’s service. I have never known her make a recording that was not a unique contribution to the history of the work’s interpretation….
Read on here.
And here.
En francais ici.
How many recordings did you refuse to review during the US and UK led illegal invasion of Iraq? Or are you selective in your outrage and imperialism is only bad when the other guys do it?
Excellent post. Armchair objectors…
Then again, NL is also there to launch debate.
WHat-about-ism doesn’t cut it. Two wrongs don’t make a right.
There’s nothing wrong, and everything right, in being “selective” with one’s “outrage.” It presupposes standards, and the ability to distinguish freedom from totalitarianism.
The freedom of Iraqi women being bombed back to the middle ages by freedom bombs? The freedom of hundreds of thousands of Iraqi civilians to be killed by American freedom loving bombs and missiles?
What had the Iraq war to do with freedom? Nothing!
What standards? Is self righteousness a standard?
What arrogance and delusion…
There’s no comparison between the two.
True. Civilians killed (so far) are much more by Americans in Iraq. Inconvenient truth.
Yes, it’s the elephant in the room isn’t it!!
As opposed to whataboutism. That is *always* spot on and gives a warm feeling to the righteous.
One could discuss the few similarities and the many differences between these two invasions and the way the wars are conducted. But that would assume that you are actually interested in these distinctions. And I am willing to bet the farm that this is not the case.
Artists in the U.S. were free to criticize invasion of Iraq. Many did. How many artists living in Russia are free to denounce Purim’s unnecessary war?
Nonsense – no equivalence
Well-said Jim
Very well put. There seems to be a underlying moral bankruptcy among the vast majority of Russian-born people worldwide even those who have defected from the country. Not genetic but their cultural essence is fundamentally hostile to political freedom, decent treatment of other people whether different nations, racial, religious, cultural, sexual minorities etc. Their entire history is replete with this and seems unlikely to ever change.
Tom Phillips, which genocidal English-speaking county do you come from? Of course Putin is a warmonger and murderer but are you going to paint all citizens of the UK, US, Canada, Australia etc with the same brush as you do the Russians? After all, those countries are no strangers to the innocent slaughter of civilians, at home and abroad. Or perhaps you reserve your xenophobia to Russian people.
Well articulated, Mr. Phillips. The underlying moral bankruptcy of my people distressed even Hitler himself, but he was not up to the task of defeating the Russians. There must be something about being an untermensch that allows a Russian to survive like a cockroach. Yes? As you say, history is replete with this, but cheer up, this may change with a new Hitler in the wings who will succeed in eradicating this morally reprehensible people and create a Lebensraum for Europeans. Don’t tell anyone, but I’ve actually seen photos and videos of Zelensky standing next to soldiers wearing Nazi symbols and I hear they’ve done a good job using their superhuman cultural essence to expunge the last vestiges of the inferior Russian cultural essence.
Stalin was hardly any better morally than Hitler. And you certainly have far more despots and cruelty in your homeland’s longer history than Germany (or any other Western European nation) does.Not even close except for 1933-45. Unfortunately as I said morality and human conscience is in very short supply among you folks and that clearly continues to this day with people like you as we see in Ukraine.
Stalin was a Georgian influenced by Marx who was a philosopher steeped in German culture, so the enlightened Europeans brought this revoltingly utopian disease to the Russians with the help of their proxies Lenin and Trotsky. The years 1933 – 1945, a short period in the span of history as you pointed out, had the most unspeakably grisly crimes ever committed that it made the Devil himself blush! And this from a so-called historically civilized land that produced Schiller, Goethe, Heine, Bach, Beethoven, Brahms, etc.. Don’t lecture me about morality and human conscience!
Your hero Stalin was simultaneously committing mass genocides of populations during the concurrent period as well as until 1953.
“There seems to be an underlying moral bankruptcy among the vast majority of Russian-born people worldwide…’
You then go on to explain that they are ‘hostile’ to people of ‘different nations’, apparently without the faintest awareness of your own fatuous and ironic prejudice.
Congratulations though on speaking to the ‘vast majority of Russian-born people worldwide’ to give us your wisdom. That must have been very time consuming.
Norm has not apparently heard of the atrocities of the us empire and its mostly moronic populace.
A genocidal war machine -business enterprise masquerading as a country and cheered on by the largely dolt populace.
Exactly. War is a racket. And people complicit and ignorant. Shameful.
What was it that Harper Lee wrote; “you cannot really know a man until you walk around in his shoes”.
By commenting as you clearly did about the performances, in one sentence, you actually reviewed the performances. Why did you do that land go against your word?
Why not ignore them then rather than listen to them and write an article about them.
One can understand how and why a person trapped in a dictatorship is sometimes forced to collaborate. Not all can escape, not all can live abroad. Returning and thus taking a atand is different. Gifted people sometimes make bad judgments when they act outside their sphere of knowledge. However, for us, the listeners, it is easier: I enjoy music, and I do not wish to enjow music created under the swastika. I do not wish to enjoy music created or performed by people who now support mr. Putin’s actions.
Luxury outrage. I’m tired of it.
Not much to choose between the Russian-backed genocidal Sadam regime (5,000 plus Kurds gassed, condemned by post-Saddam Iraqi court as a war crime) and that of the similarly charged Putin. I have always been intrigued by the motives of self-styled ‘human rights’ campaigners who spring to the defence of such regimes after having either denied or ignored their crimes.
It’s a complex world. But people in Iraq and Libya were much better off in many aspects, in their majority, than in today’s shitholes they were bombed into by America et al.
Of course it needs a certain knowledge about these countries to know that. Hard to come by apparently in the “freedom” loving circles.
“I can’t review them”.
“… instead, I write an article about myself.”
Sums up our time perfectly.
I can say, with absolute certainty, that the wish of the writer of the article (although I very much respect his opinions in most classical fields) is largely influenced by a desire of virtue-signaling, rather that a genuine longing for human rights to be respected in Ukraine. I’ve never heard a peep about the atrocities made under UK’s treatment of colonies, and how that affected their culture, nor have I heard a genuine interest to dwell on the rich culture of Ukraine and it’s people. Rather, I’ve only heard dissing of artists that, by a big portion, have absolutely nothing to do with Ukraine’s invasion, and will never have a say in anything that goes on in this barbarian war. I advise Mr.Lebrecht to decide, whether he will have a political blog, or a music one, because selecting and cherry picking disaster is much too distasteful.
Yup. Simply pr pc virtue signaling like USians still masks to stick it to Trumpo. It’s a mental disorder. Where was the outrage with us carpet bombing? Starving 500000 children and Madeleine Albright saying it’s worth it. Somalia, Iran, Iran, Korea, Vietnam, Indonesia, Yemen, Syria, etc etc etc.
AUUSUK is crickets -tumbleweeds.
Lebrecht is just another run-of-the-mill hysterical Leftie. No thought, just emotion.
We love this comment. Almost every word is counter-factual.
I would love, in genuine intentions, if you could explain my flaws in logic. I don’t wish to seek any petty stabs at your reputation, as I respect your views in classical music, but you have to understand that you’re not a politician, Norman. Your good conscience is selective and pretty near-sighted, if I can say so. I’m 17, and i can’t judge or condemn a person who was lived to see the Soviet Union, and with all my wishes I wait for the day that we’ll talk about this invasion as we do about Berlin wall, but smearing a musician (not a world leader, not a deputy of Putin) for existing within the context of Russia is ridiculous. Do you have the means to flee the UK in case of a overthrow of the government by your first minister? What about your family, can you leave them behind and guarantee their safety? I want this invasion to stop, but starting a cultural war in a canibal attempt at throat-cutting other artists is simply not the way to do it.
From your review:”The issue is slightly blurred by the performances having been recorded in Toulouse, France, before the war, and conducted by Tugan Sokhiev, a Russian who resigned from the Bolshoi soon after the Ukraine invasion. The performances, per se, have nothing to do with the present situation.”
So, judge accordingly, the music, and not the person’s choice for whatever reasons she made. Musicians are, many times, politically naive. They are busy practising and not reading all the nuances of the news, and in the case of sanctions, perhaps unaware. It is so easy to judge; so difficult to empathize. and, maybe, her reasons are financial.
Norman , you
are just pathetic and shameful.
Jim is sooo right.
With all due respect, but speaking has someone who reviewed a few recordings in his time (I think I counted it up to 1000 CDs), when you write such phrases as “I have never known her make a recording that was not a unique contribution to the history of the work’s interpretation,” “the pianist’s pianist par excellence,” “Her performances of Beethoven’s third and fourth concertos are elevated, magical, unfailingly musical,” and “They will be treasured by many listeners for a very long time” well, I am sorry … but you HAVE just reviewed the recording. Even if you refused compensation and returned the disc, it was reviewed.
To misquote Tom Lehrer: “if people don’t have anything to say, the least they can do is to shut up about it”.
Why create the publicity of writing this article at all ?
You’re so brave
Well, you did at least write your very favorable opinion of the performances, which amounts to a review, or a least a plug.
Your attempt at a comparison with Furtwängler – on your long term agenda to throw dirt on him, we know – is flawed.
Furtwängler stayed all his life firmly put in the middle of the cultural region he so deeply felt connected to. He thought he could wither the annoying Nazi nuisance like that, from an elevated position of cultural nobility. That didn’t work as intended to keep himself dry in the thunderstorm, we all know the history.
Leonskaja on the other hand lives in exile for decades, in fact most of her life. There is no comparison between them, except for both showing their humanity in their search for expressing and finding their identity. Something that can get into you, particularly when you realize the approaching end of your life.
Life often has tragic elements.
…not “to wither’, but ‘to weather”
How ridiculous but sadly not unexpected… vast numbers of people who seemed intelligent and discerning have been inexplicably dumbed down and incomprehensibly pulled into the ” current thing” ( whatever media marketing 101 campaign it is) accepting of the obvious cartoon villainy and propaganda of legacy media, to virtue signal on behalf of some simplified, weaponised message. Maybe it would be worth listening to ALSO the things we vehemently do NOT agree with also… to see if the picture is more complicated. For example experts on the history and geopolitics of the area, such as Prof. John Mearsheimer, the analysts and experts and translators at The Duran channel, or the film analysis Ukraine on Fire. Or Bobby Kennedy even, who is aware of the CIA’s international activity since Alan Dulles. Could we ( and France, Germany) have honoured the Minsk agreements not to move an inch eastwards, is NATO an offensive rather than defensive body, what would ( did – Cuba) the US do if/ when nuclear arms were stationed on its borders, what did Victoria Nuland and John mcCain and the Neocons have to do with the Maidan coup in 2014, the three new TV stations put up overnight, the installing of yet another – explicitly chosen by Nuland- Western facing government, ( 77 by the CIA at least). Why did Boris go over and end the detente nearly reached between Zelensky and Putin, who has shares and interests in Lockheed Martin and Northrup Grumman, as weapons are sent and countries’ orders are backfilled, what had the oligarch Kolomaisky to do with the creation of Zelensky’s role moving from a soap opera comic one, and its bankrolling, into a political figure/ leader and what is his net worth for his role, why do John McCain, Mitch Romney, Nancy Pelosi and Joe Biden’s kids ALL earn thousands ( c$80k) a month being on the board of Ukr oil and gas companies such as Burisma without being remotely qualified, how many nights have the Kiev regime ( and when the bbc used to make proper documentaries the Asov, actual swastika- wearing/ not ” neo-” nazi battalion WERE actually interviewed on TV), how many nights have they shelled the Donbass Region and ethnic Russians suffered for 8 years in Donetsk and Lugansk,… oh so many unaddressed questions while the people, the poor people of that land are victimised and killed with no seeming will to end this above all. It’s war as usual and we are being used. ££££££££££.
Spot on. This is way over the heads of the AUUSUK crowd. It’s virtue signaling and parroting Anglo imperialistic propaganda. Nudelmans (“Nuland”) f— the eu is for all to here 2014 circa.
Wasn’t the us flipping out during Cuban missile crisis in response to the us empire provocations of placing nuclear weapons in turkey aimed at Russia.
Crickets and tumbleweeds.
Ironic that this is a recording of a composer who originally supported Napoleon, even to the point of casting him as the hero in his Eroica Symphony, until the day Napoleon invaded Russia, when Beethoven scratched out Napoleon’s name with such vehemence that it left a permanent hole in the manuscript. To unironically record Beethoven while supporting a Russian dictator is the height of fascism, albeit with a kindly face. Anna Netrebko, Valery Gergiev, like Beinum and Karajan in the Nazi era, demonstrate such a proclivity for fascistic race supremacy that I, personally find it impossible to eliminate those tendencies from my assessment of their art. I appreciate your recognition of the skill and craft and even transcendence that a bent artist can achieve. And I applaud you for declining to review it for the reason that you have lost the ability to be objective due to their support of a regime bereft of morals and bent on conquest. I don’t agree with everything you say on here, particularly the way you comment on women’s dress on stage, which for me has its own brand of patriarchical bias, but I appreciate your stands against fascists, no matter how kindly they look, or how brilliantly they play.
The Furtwängler analogy Norman makes in his review is spot on. Just as Furtwängler said he stayed in Germany to “save” German culture from the Nazis, are Leonskaya’s appearances an implied endorsement of the Putin regime or is she also trying to “save” Russian culture from Putin and his cronies? One wonders.
I am no fam of Putin, but….. Ukraine has been committing war crimes, including a massive surge in shelling its own civilian population in the weeks before the Russian invasion, is (just) even more corrupt than Russia and has actual Nazis in powerful and controlling positions.
The US empire and its’ vassals are vile with their endless war mongering and provocations in their endless lust for imperialism-colonialism. Are you sitting it out and cannot in good conscious review USian music?
It is time to speak clearly and loudly: we are facing a genocide in Ukraine NOW. The perpetrators are Putin and his mafia supported by the silent majority of the russian nation. Elisabeth Leonskaya is on the black side of the history and this signal needs to be sent to her. Pondering the atrocities commited by the British, the Belgians, the Vikings, Genghis Khan and relating them to the current drama in Ukraine is simply inappropriate and mean. We have genocide on the chessboard. NOW.
And that, of course includes the Russian conscripts sent daily to the meat grinder.
Just one thought – if NL could not in all conscience give this disc a star rating, who did?
Well said Norman – you have a perfect right to refuse to review her new recording but have shown fairness in acknowledging her greatness as a player. She must have weighed up the possibility of dissent but nonetheless decided she was prepared to sup with the devil.