A broken shoulder rest? No problem for Gidon Kremer
OrchestrasBetween movements of the Mieczyslaw Weinberg violin concerto with the London Philharmonic Orchestra last night,, Gidon Kremer paused to adjust his shoulder rest – only for the wretched thing to break in half.
‘Never happened to me before in 60 years on stage,’ Gidon tells slippedisc.com. Happily one of the first violins gave up a suitable rest and Kremer was able to finish a momentous performance of the work.
He followed it with a muted miniature by Valentin Silvestrov, ‘to remind us of the suffering in Ukraine’.
Who said politics and music don’t mix? The second half of the concert consisted of Shostakovich’s Babi Yar symphony, an indictment of Soviet anti-semitism and other abuses. Andrei Boreyko conducted an imposing account of the hour-long work with soloist Alexander Roslavets and an impressive LPO chorus.
My niece’s boyfriend is a violinist and he just said that Pirastro contraption shoulder pad is the worst of them all. Over $350 price tag and Mr Kremer’s experience is common. I remember my Resonan’s, which worked for decades and cost a few dollars.
Happy Thanksgiving Day!
The Boston Symphony website reminds us the symphony was created to commemorate the Babi Yar massacre done by Nazis and their banderists affiliated helpers from western Ukraine, the ancestors of those your country politicians and history challenged folks are supporting right now.
https://www.bso.org/works/symphony-no-13-babi-yar
That said, the Weinberg concerto is magnificent.
If we hold everyone responsible for everything their ancestors ever did, then probably no living human being deserves to be supported no matter what is currently being done to them.
Tell that to the de-colonialism crowd.
With pleasure.
If Bandera was consigned to distant history then I would agree, but he continues to enjoy enormous support in Western Ukraine. They erected a monument to him in Lviv in 2007, and renamed the main street of the city “Stepan Bandera Street”. Zelenskiy said recently “Bandera is a hero for certain part (sic) of Ukrainians, and that is a normal and cool thing.” Many Ukrainian soldiers wear the patch of the SS Galicia division, Bandera’s brigade which carried out said massacres, of Jews, Poles, and “Moskals” (Russians) in particular. Their slogan was “Slava Ukraini, Heroem Slava”, which everyone says now, often in ignorance of the phrase’s origin. I have visited cemeteries in Western Ukraine where Polish victims of this genocide are buried, and their graves continue to be defaced to this day by locals. So, I’m afraid, whereas most other European countries buried Nazism long ago, in Ukraine it has survived, and the government and its western backers seem to have no interest in quashing it.
“Who said music and politics don’t mix?” I seem to remember it was you Mr. Lebrecht…
Certainly when it comes to other theatres of war.
Pirastro korfker £300+
That’s not what Babi Yar is about. Yevtuschenko’s poem laments the lack of a specific memorial for Jews killed at Babi Yar, since in the Soviet Union only secular memorials were allowed. Under Stalin, even historical suffering had to be collectivised and not ascribed to a specific social or religious group. The opening of the piece criticises that very specific Stalinist doctrine, before going into more general episodes of suffering in everyday Soviet life.
Your statement about art being political simply demonstrates how politics is in the eye of the beholder, since you read into the piece the political message that you want to hear. Many Soviet citizens at the time simply appreciated the piece as a denunciation of the Nazis. That room for ambiguity that Shostakovich leaves us is precisely what makes it art, and not a simple political dictat.
It didn’t break. He just didn’t tighten it well. It’s a fantastic shoulder rest. Never had a problem.
The poem by Yevgeny Yevtushenko that inspired Dmitry Shostakovich to compose his 13th Symphony and became the text of its opening movement is actually very clear and unambiguous about its subject – it is an eloquent protest against antisemitism and especially against Russian antisemitism in particular.