Gergiev supports Putin in Weimar
I’d like to begin with a personal experience. As Professor and Chair of International Politics at the University of Jena and member of the German-Russian Forum, I was invited to take part in a high-ranking conference – the ‘Petersburg Dialogue’ in Weimar on 8-10 April 2002. The then German Chancellor Gerhard Schröder and Russia’s President Vladimir Putin had inaugurated the alleged dialogue of representatives of Germany’s and Russia’s ‘civil societies’. Several groups gathered to discuss and jointly issue declarations on future cooperation. (As we learned later, Putin had already started to take power away from the oligarchs, to control free media, and thus dismantle the modest elements of ‘civil society’ in Russia.) Later Putin and Schröder personally attended the conference and in the evening a selected group of participants went to the Hotel Elephant Weimar for an opulent supper.
Hotel Elephant was famous for its ‘Hitler suite’, where the German Nazi dictator used to stay during his numerous visits to the famous cultural town of Goethe, Schiller, Liszt and other celebrities. In the afternoon of the conference we were treated to a concert in the Staatstheater, where the newly elected National Assembly of the Weimar Republic had met on 6 February 1920. The Russian-Ossetian conductor Valery Gergiev conducted the Staatskapelle Weimar with works from Richard Wagner and Sergej Prokoviev. As known, Wagner’s opera ‘Lohengrin’ with its famous overture had received its first performance under Franz Liszt in Weimar. And, by the way, Lohengrin the “god-sent hero”, had also been a favourite of Adolf Hitler. Prokoviev’s suite from ‘Romeo and Juliet’ provided the Russian contribution to the programme. Interestingly, Prokoviev had been lured back from exile in Paris in 1936 by the Soviet dictator Stalin, but later found himself isolated, suppressed and fearing for his life, particularly in 1948. He died on the same day as Stalin, on 5 March 1953. During the evening supper, where I was seated next to Gergiev, I witnessed the close personal relationship between the Russian President and his star Maestro.
Gergiev continues his support of Putin in Munich
Twenty years later, Gergiev was chief conductor of the Munich Philharmonic Orchestra. After Putin’s full-scale attack against Ukraine on 24 February 2022, Gergiev was asked to distance himself from Russia’s aggression. He refused and the mayor of Munich decided to fire him. Other leading Western opera houses and orchestras, among them the Vienna Philharmonic, followed and cancelled all their appointments with the Russian conductor. Since then Gergiev hasn’t appeared again in the West. While this created quite some public interest, another absentee from the Munich orchestra was hardly noticed.
Another Putin sympathiser departs
The Romanian-born concert master Lorenz Nasturica-Herschcovici of the Munich Philharmonic also left and followed Gergiev back to St. Petersburg, where he had already performed as the leader of the Mariinsky Stradivarius Ensemble. Interestingly, Stradivari violins in the Ensemble had been purchased, among others, from the US collector David Fulton. Nobody has asked who in St. Petersburg had managed to pay the millions of US dollars for them. My suspicion is that the money came from Putin’s KGB/FSB funds they had acquired particularly during the 1990s, by selling Russian raw materials and cashing in the profits, instead of providing food for the starving population. For details see Catherine Belton’s “Putin’s People”.
St Petersburg New Year Concert
As one can watch on YouTube, Nasturica-Herschcovici conducted the Stradivari Ensemble’s New Year’s concert just recently, on 31 December 2024 in St. Petersburg, with famous works of Johann Strauss Jr., Tchaikovsky and others, clearly trying to imitate the New Year’s concert in Vienna. All this pretence of happiness and joy was being presented while 1,650 km to the South-West thousands of Russian and Ukrainian soldiers and civilians were being killed; hundreds of thousands had already died before. What a cynical pretence of “normality”, what an abuse of beautiful music for the glorification of Putin’s imperialist, criminal bloody war!
Gergiev’s support for Putin rewarded
Gergiev, back in Russia as the director of the famous Mariinsky Theatre in St. Petersburg, was awarded the directorship of the Bolshoi Theatre, the second most prestigious cultural institution in Moscow, by President Putin. Its previous director, Vladimir Urin, who had joined a number of cultural figures in signing an anti-war letter at the start of the full-scale Ukraine war, had “retired”. After this “chistka” (purge), Valery Gergiev has become the absolute leading figure of Russia’s classical music, paying thereby tribute to the dictator’s rule.
As known, Russians are ardent music lovers. What Wagner has been for Germans, Tchaikovsky was and still is for them the peak of classical music with his ballets, operas, symphonic and chamber music works. Interestingly, Tschaikovsky was a homosexual and was forced, with the Czar’s approval, according to David Brown, to take his life at the end of October 1893. Under Putin’s rule, where LGBTQ+ people have been stigmatized and arrested, the composer nevertheless serves to glorify ‘Great Russia’.
Parallel with Furtwängler’s support for Hitler
There is an interesting case of another fascist dictator and his favourite conductor some decades earlier. Wilhelm Furtwängler, the chief conductor of the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra, was the favourite of Adolf Hitler, who adored Wagner and made sure that Furtwängler would conduct his operas in Bayreuth during the 1930s. Unlike other famous conductors such as Fritz Busch, Bruno Walter and Otto Klemperer, who had left Germany, either of their own free will in disgust of the Nazis, or by being forced to leave because they were Jews, Furtwängler decided to stay in Berlin. He regarded it his mission to preserve German classical music and he tried, albeit in vain, to keep all Jewish musicians in his orchestra. Furtwängler never raised his right arm for the fascist salute and did not join the Nazi party. Nonetheless, he had to conduct concerts under the swastika flags to celebrate the Führer’s birthday and he led the “Reichs-Orchester” on tours not only to neutral Stockholm but also to Paris and other occupied cities during Germany’s war.
Two conductors with differing attitudes to their fascist dictator
Furtwängler disliked and even despised Hitler. Still, to protect his orchestra and preserve his own career, he had to accommodate to the Nazi regime. After the war, he faced a commission of ‘Denazification’ and was forbidden to conduct until his rehabilitation in April 1947. He also faced fierce criticism, particularly among American Jewish musicians and German refugees, who prevented him to become the chief conductor of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra. Contrary to Herbert von Karajan, Furtwängler had never joined the Nazi party. Judging his motives and behaviour in fairness remains difficult. He obviously was a completely apolitical human being, an artist, absolutely engaged in his musical ambition and not ready to sacrifice it, when staying under Hitler’s murderous dictatorship.
Gergiev, on the other hand, is an absolutely opportunistic figure who has maintained a close personal relationship, first with the Deputy Major of St. Petersburg and then Russia’s President over the last 25 years. He served the dictator, among other events, in conducting a “victory concert” in Palmyra/Syria 2016 and enjoys his position as Russia’s leading conductor since 2022 – the cultural personification of “Great Russia”, with its combination of authoritarian rule, religious orthodoxy, and imperialism. Very much like Stalin, Putin uses leading cultural figures as “engineers” of the Russians’ “souls” (quote from Stalin), as instruments for bolstering his power. Gergiev returned to exclusively serve the ruthless dictator, mass murderer and war criminal.
Any serious lover of music should ask how Gergiev’s personal political amorality does reconcile with conducting music which preaches the highest human morality, say from Beethoven (“Alle Menschen werden Brüder…”) or Bruckner (“Dem lieben Gott gewidmet”) – both in their last ninth symphonies.
Conclusion
I’d like to summarize that Furtwängler, despite his failings, was a serious and great musician, whereas Gergiev should be called a charlatan – somebody who just pretends to be a great musician.
There is a saying in German: “Wess’ Brot is ess’, dess’ Lied ich sing’” – “He who pays the piper calls the tune”.
