Barenboim and Rattle issue tribute to pianist who died in Putin’s prison

Two dozen of the world’s leaing musicians have published a letter of admiration for the pianist Pavel Kushnir, who was arrested for posting an anti-Putin video and was allowed to die of hunger in jail.

They attached a video of Kushnir performing Rachmaninov, a favoured Putin composer.

Here’s the letter:

Hello! My name is Pavel Kushnir. I am a pianist by profession (I am not afraid of this word), and I work as a soloist of the Kursk Philharmonic Society.”

This is how one of the letters of the thirty-nine-year-old pianist, writer and activist Pavel Kushnir begins, who recently died in a Birobidzhan prison after a dry hunger strike. He was imprisoned there awaiting trial for criticizing the Russian government’s war. His crime was running a YouTube channel with five subscribers in which he spoke out against the war. The story of Don Quixote repeats itself – with a catastrophic ending that, unfortunately, is more typical of life than of literature.

We are musicians too. Even though it is difficult to write, to think, to exist, when we are faced with such all-encompassing evil, we must take a stand. Nothing will bring Pavel Kushnir back. We write here to remember him, and we write because of the countless unknown political prisoners in Russia and all over the world. Perhaps the greatest tragedy of Pavel’s life is that we are only now realizing what a remarkable artist, writer and thinker he was. We simply did not know him. This must remind us that the perverse “selection process” of law enforcement leads to the most wonderful and fearless people being thrown into prison, often the best people of a sick nation. They have even less chance of benefiting from a prisoner exchange than the people we know from the media – but we must not forget them.

In today’s hellish kaleidoscope of fake news, false morals and false values, we have become almost deaf. When we suddenly hear a distant, beautiful sound that, despite its modesty, drowns out the omnipresent hellish roar and clang, we bow to those heroes and visionaries who, in their desperate loneliness, sacrifice themselves for humanity and pay the ultimate price.

Martha Argerich, Daniel Barenboim, Elena Bashkirova, Boris Berman, Andrey Boreyko, Yefim Bronfman, Isabelle Faust, Julia Fischer, Sol Gabetta, Kirill Gerstein, Vladimir Jurowski, Igor Levit, Alexei Lubimov, Mischa Maisky, Alexander Melnikov, Anne-Sophie Mutter, Emmanuel Pahud, Sir Antonio Pappano, Sir Simon Rattle, Sir András Schiff, Katia Skanavi, Andreas Staier

UPDATE: The letter was composed by a friend of Pavel’s, the pianist Olga Shkrygunova, and circulated by the pianist Alexander Melnikov.