Breaking: Concertgebouw restores one Jerusalem Quartet concert
NewsAfter a wave of international outrage, the management of Amsterdam’s Concertgebouw has reinstated Saturday’s concert by the Jerusalem Quartet, which it previously banned on safety grounds.
The concert has been brought forward to 7 p.m. and will be held in the small hall, to avoid overlap with the main hall audience. This makes it easier to arrange security, the Concertgebouw says. The concert can be watched on livestream.
Previously, the Walloon Church in Amsterdam offered itself as an alternative venue.
Before the engagement was arranged, the Quartet issued this statement:
‘We are shocked and deeply saddened that our performances at the Concertgebouw cannot take place this weekend. Due to violence in the streets, and threats to the Concertgebouw, ours was the only concerts cancelled, which evokes memories of darker times for jewish artists in Europe. We are now in close contact with the Concertgebouw to assure security measures for the future so that this situation never happens again to any artist, and to find the soonest possible available alternate dates.
‘The immense outpouring of support we have received in the past days is overwhelming. Our quartet has had a decades-long relationship with the Concertgebouw, and we have a loyal and committed audience in the Netherlands. We will not allow this bond to be broken and want to assure our audiences that we will continue to perform and share our music with them.’
Although partial amends have now been made, the Concertgebouw cannot erase its error and incompetency.
UPDATE: The C’bous has just issued this statement:
The Jerusalem Quartet will perform this Saturday, May 18 7pm at The Concertgebouw. The safety of staff, visitors and musicians at this concert will be safeguarded thanks to tightened security measures, adjusted visitor flow and an adjusted start time. To make the concert accessible to everyone, it will also be available via a stream on the website of The Concertgebouw.
The earlier decision to reschedule the planned concerts has met with understanding as well as disapproval. General Manager Simon Reinink: “Every concert must be able to go ahead. The Concertgebouw fully supports its mission to connect and enrich everyone with sublime music, regardless of background, religion, culture or any distinction. We must continue to stand up for the free society we want to be. Every day.”
You’d think they might offer an apology. Or is that too unDutch to be considered?
What a PR mess for a normally reliable band.
“Concertgebouw” is the hall, the Concertgebouw Orchestra has a different management and is a completely separate organisation, so it had nothing to do with this.
So they keep saying.But the orchestra won’t condemn the hall for its offensive action. They are joined at the hip.
I think many of us would hesitate before publicly condemning our landlords.
Again, Norman, the RCO is structured as a very democratic organization. So it would take pretty some time before ‘the orchestra’ could be able to publish a(ny) statement about this whole fuss. (How nasty the incident also might be regarded.) Not to mention how to reach a(ny) general supported opinion within the orchestra.
Please let’s not forget that their principal duty and mission is, to establish themselves as one of the very best orchestras in the whole world…
Whitch same connotation obviously worldwide provokes these very explicite, and partly pretty critical reviews to their ‘visible’ (non) behaviour…
It should be noted that this whole mess is due to potential violence against Jewish people and concertgoers committed by tree-hugging, green-haired, LGBTQIAA+ mindless supporters of Hamas.
…proterroristers.
The quartet did nothing wrong
Correct. And the playing of wrong notes has been carefully restricted to the rehearsels and kept secret.
I can just not believe the bigotry in this post. If you had seen as I did the disruption in Amsterdam last week due to police control of protest you might start understanding why Cgb was concerned
I don’t understand why they not simply apologized. They could have said: ‘Sorry, this was a very difficult situation for us concerning the security measures we had to consider on very short notice, since we had not expected anything like this threat to happen. Usually, the Concertgebouw is an utterly safe and calm place, never inviting any uproar of any kind, not even of the musical kind. So we reinstated the planned concerts of the Jerusalem Quartet.’
The last real tribulation that happened in the building was the ‘Nutcracker Action’ on 17th November 1969 when a small group of young avantgarde composers disturbed, with a lot of noise, a concert in the Big Hall where the flute concert of Quantz was being performed, as a protest against the program policy of the Concertgebouw Orchestra who were supposed to play too much ‘old music’. The orchestral staff however did not change its programming polici because they did already offer new music, and they did not want to be put under pressure by interest groups. Those were the days….
Later-on there was some perplexing incident which was not in the building as such: a fired violinist posted at many concert evenings at the entrance of the building, playing two cadential chords (V-I) in a satirical dissonant way before saying; ‘Sorry!’ He was gently removed after some weeks. I am not making this up, having witnessed it myself.
I think “wave of international outrage” is a bit strong. Slipped Disc stirred up a protest from people who care about this sort of thing. But aside from a late NY Times story, I haven’t seen much coverage of it otherwise.
If you familiar with musical world, read names, who signed petition. If you don’t- do your research. You will understand the meaning of “ international outrage “. Names speak for themselves.
Do you mean, how many are Jewish? Please be clear.
Whatever happened to the gallant and resolute Dutch who bravely mounted a tenacious defence against the Wehrmacht for 47 minutes in 1940? I’m sure they would be dismayed by this fiasco.
That’s a scandalous, entirely untrue slander: they stuck it out for a full 51 minutes. (Source: Stürmische Beobachter, May 1941)
Any updates on when the UN will pass a resolution to try Netanyahoo and his military commanders for war crimes against humanity…..?
I’m very happy they are restored and playing. I remember the times during COVID when the Dover Quartet couldn’t be advertised to the presenters as “vaccinated” due to the first violinist being anti-vax and delaying to get vaccinated until much later time when he learned that he had to be vaccinated to perform.