The Iranian conductor Ali Alexander Rahbari reminds us that he is now the first permanent guest conductor in Mariinsky theatre in its history.
He has conducted 12 different programmes in as many months and the boss cannot get enough of him.
A social media activist has circulated a video…
A PR informs us this morning that the…
The Berlin State Opera communicated tonight that its…
Zachary Woolfe, chief music critic of the New…
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I remember, that several years ago Nikolaj Znaider was permanent guest conductor at the Mariinsky, conducting among others Nozze di Figaro performances. So Rahbari was not the first in the long history of this institution.
Peter, I seem to remember that Znaider was Principal Guest Conductor of the Mariinsky Orchestra, specifically. Also, wasn’t Noseda Principal Guest Conductor of the Mariinsky Theatre from the late-90’s or early 2000’s? I think some of the confusion now may come from the usage of “Permanent” in place of “Principal”. In any case, Rahbari is not listed in list of conductors on the official Mariinsky website – in any language…
By “boss” do you mean Putin?
It’s all you are able to say;?
No, Gergiev…
Dear Norman,
Maestro Valery Gergiev has many, many real and good friends who admire him every day and enjoy his great art of conducting. For me as a professional conductor, he is without any doubt the greatest and best conductor of all time.
The musicians and the employees of the Mariinsky Theatre love him and appreciate him as a very good، cordial، excellent person and great general music director.
Maestro Rahbari, do not worry. This blog is full of confusion over what is happening in Russia and Ukraine right now. After the fall of Zelensky, the West will open up to you and Maestro Gergiev again. As you may have gathered, the Anglosphere prefers conductors who dabble in questionable sexual behaviors. GLORY to Mariinsky!
“This blog is full of confusion over what is happening in Russia and Ukraine right now.”
Fuck you, vatnik.
Very civil and polite vocabulary!? Fits the Slipdisc perfectly!!! What happens with Slipdisc’s rigorous censure!?
If you want to be nice to Nazis and ruscists, that’s on you.
It’s Stalinist bloodthirsty authoritarian pigs like you and Dmitri (and similar Russians i.e. the vast majority) who should be “censured”.
Thanks Mate, I have got bored with all that putinistas’ cr-p long ago too
More fascist sympathisers on this site, I see. Gergiev is as disgraceful a human being as he is a conductor, a complete fake.
Dear He-whose-nose-is-so-very-brown-and-the-tongue-as-well. It looks like you couldn’t buy red ink.
A man moves from East Germany to Siberia, where he knows his letters will be censored. He establishes a code with his friends: anything written in blue ink is honest and true; anything written in red ink is false and only there to get the truth past the censors. A month goes by and the man’s friends receive a letter written in blue ink: “Everything is wonderful here. Stores are full of good food. Movie theaters show good films from the West. Apartments are large and luxurious. The only thing you cannot buy is red ink.”
He’s a Putin stooge. And so are you. History will judge him – and you – accordingly.
Right! History will judge Putin as the great man fighting neocolonialism and Fashism of the bloodsuckers of the West.
Quite funny from a Bosanski nacionalista guy who escaped to the rotten West and stayed there, abusing the “bloodsucking” system. And what words of admiration you have for Milosevic and Ratko Mladic?
Is that you, Ali? 😀
How pathetic. A mediocre unemployed conductor sells his conscience in consideration for a permanent job at a place where noone with minimum dignity would set foot. That’s not the first time and regrettably not the last that petty egotistic motivations are the driving force for aclnowledging brutal immoral acts. Just wondering whether the fact this honorable conductor is Iranian has got anything to do with this.
Surely it does – Iran and Russia are fast friends in the world of diplomacy.
3,000.000 (three millions) killed in Iraq. Have you ever utter a world about it!? Who was banned than!?
Maestro Rabhari, you are entitled to your opinion. But calling Gergiev “the greatest and best conductor of all time” – are you even a little serious?
What about Karajan, Klemperer, Furtwangler, Erich Kleiber, Carlos Kleiber, Toscanini, Giulini, Mravinsky, etc.? Any of these would be far more credible candidates for that designation.
And it would be far too long a list of conductors who while not the “greatest of all time” are certainly more artistically successful artists than Maestro Gergiev.
Have you listened to Maestro Gergiev’s Bruckner cycle? It’s a strong candidate for being the worst Bruckner cycle in history. The good news however is someone else would likely win that “designation”.
Many is the time I have left a Gergiev performance disappointed. I strongly suspect those I found half-decent or reasonable at best, it was actually the rehearsal conductor or VG’s assistant who deserved the real credit, as the man himself was probably on a plane to the event. (I once passed VG relieving himself in a London street after an indifferent Lohengrin at ROHCG, beside the point but it speaks of the man that he found it acceptable behaviour.) Ironically, Rabhari is actually a decent conductor and not mediocre as others here have said, regardless of a questionable personal moral stance. His Marinsky appointment does reflect wider Russian-Iranian ties, so look at it in wider political context.
I’m sure Gergiev believes only decadent Westerners urinate in private. One wonders if he’d been consuming the kind of beverages that tend to cause public urination.
Very smart and intellectually valued comment!?
Absolutely. Gergiev simply has no technical ability whatsoever.
Not the first conductor to have an idiosyncratic beat (that is being charitable to VG) – think Furtwangler or Tennstedt, admittedly both leagues above VG musically and interpretively speaking – several orchestral musicians might argue technically as well, but they are better placed to answer that, as being just a listener, I am but a humble functionary.
“… he [Gergiev] is without any doubt the greatest and best conductor of all time.”
This statement can’t be taken remotely seriously even in the best of times. Maybe it was written under, shall we say, duress or under the gun. In any case, is that the same greatest and best conductor the world has ever had who allowed the fraudulent popera singer Andrea Bocelli in his (disastrously embarrassing) recording of Verdi’s Requiem? You know, the one in which America’s Sweetheart also sang the Blues?
Whether I agree with him or not, it is very courageous and decent of Mr. Rahbari to jump in here. I feel people on both sides of the war are caught up in the madness of their leaders.
“madness of their leaders”
It wasn’t just Hitler’s war. And in the same regard, it’s not just Putin’s war.
Somehow fascinating that you still don’t get this.
It’s not just Putin’s war. It is a war that ranges from the Brzezinski Doctrine formulated in the late 1970s which insisted that after the collapse of the USSR that Ukraine must be isolated from Russia and NATO expaned to encircle Russia. (Brzezinski came from a minor noble family in Poland and was a monomaniacal Russophone.) Brzezinski mentored Madeline Albright (another Eastern Europe refugee family) who brought the same policies to the Clintons. And finally, the same doctrines were promoted by the think tank Project for the New American Century by members such as Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, Paul Wolfowitz, William Kristol, and Robert Kagan. To this is added Putin’s ridiculous Dostoevskian 19th century ethno-nationalism and his desire to build a Russian empire.
I know, however, that is it largely pointless to discuss this war with people in Germany whose history with Russia is so complex, including the German slaughter of 27 million Russians in WWII, and Russia’s Stalinistic occupation of East Germany. Many Germans are carry far too much baggage to take an objective look that the historical background and causes of this current war.
“and NATO expaned[sic!] to encircle Russia.”
Okay.
The “upside-down face” emoji sadly got omitted in my post.
So just imagine one after “Okay.” You seem to be good at imagining stuff.
You are DELUSIONAL. Not only hardly were 4 millions of ethnic muskovites (so called russians) killed/died during WWII, but also Soviet Union was Reich’ “reluctant” ally in staring that and in invading Finland, Baltic States and Romania on its own
Mr Osborne,
I always liked your thoughts but today you made me sick with your statement.
How could you compare Zelensky (who’s a hero setting an example of true bravery to the world) to a mass murderer who’s committed many crimes against humanity?
I completely lost interest in your thoughts.
Completely.
LOL….
Hi Ali, a word of advice- ‘The Human Centipede’ isn’t supposed to be career advice. Especially not 3rd place which is where you’re now positioned.
I look forward to never working with you again. Once was plenty.
Correlations are seen in the international sphere that explain this relationship, though we hear very little about them. In May 2007, Iran was invited to join the Collective Security Treaty Organization, the Russia-based international treaty organization that parallels NATO. After 2003, the US initiated a policy known as the Project for the New American Century to destroy all of the former Soviet client states in the Middle East in addition to Yugoslavia in order to project US hegemony in the 21st century. The countries included Tunisia, Libya, Egypt, Yemen, Syria, Iran, and Bahrain. All of these countries have faced serious problems due to US actions to undermine their governments, and in some cases such as Libya, Yemen, and Syria, massive destruction. Iran is the last hold out because it is larger and more powerful, and in part due to Russian assistance. So we see Rahbari and Gergiev forming a bond. Art has always been a weapon of war, especially as a means of asserting political, cultural, moral, and racial superiority.
The war in Georgia and the current war Ukraine are also part of this geopolitical strategy. The Kings play their chess games and our youth die.
There’s nothing wrong with Art; it’s the people themselves who aren’t so very flash.
For dictators and tyrants to survive requires a large number of the people to keep lying – to themselves and others.
Complete nonsense, as usual. For starters, the PNAC was not a creature of the US but of a neoconservative think tank.
To belabor the obvious, with the election of GW Bush the PNAC’s policies became those of the US government.
A double act… on the killing fields in Ukraine and the rostrum in Moscow.
That figures.
He lost a lot of friends in the West where he will never work again. But I’m sure he’ll find many toothpicks to use in the pit of his theater.