Tchaikovsky Competition struggles to form a jury

history repeats itself says:

Putin’s Russia has crossed a line and Gergiev is actively participating in it, so I won’t be watching the competition this time and would have been very surprised if Medici had broadcast it. His statement about wanting to have apolitical participants is exactly what Putin wants: to exclude anyone who doesn’t agree with him from the political process (which also explains the widespread passivity in Russia, Putin has been very successful with this strategy). If one were to exclude every artist who is not prepared to criticise critical aspects of his government, it would become very empty on the stages, but Russia’s war of aggression is a different category from the conflicts and human rights violations that are unfortunately all too normal in the world. Putin, for ideological reasons, wants to literally exterminate ways of life and people he does not like, with aggression and vocabulary fatally reminiscent of Hitler and Stalin; this is something that has not been seen with this global reach since the Second World War. The total suppression of civil society in Russia is another aspect that stands out. Behind it is a will to destroy that has nothing human left in it and leaves no room for it. To allow oneself to be financed by someone like that is to support what Shostakovich, for example, suffered from. To not even begin to notice this is an astonishing degree of naivety on Gergiev’s part. And even if much of what he does is musically excellent – for years I hardly missed a concert near me myself – today one has to agree with Martin Grubinger, who already states with regard to T. Currentzis, who continues to conduct in the West, that for him he is no longer an artist because he takes money that is connected to the Russian state. In view of a possible war between China and Taiwan, we should make sure that we keep our distance before we have to. In any case, “change through trade” (and contact) has failed thoroughly in both states.