Yet Solzhenitsyn also cautioned against overdrawing comparisons between now and earlier eras of Sovi

The celebrated Russian pianist Denis Matsuev comes to Harvard University s Sanders Theatre Saturday evening for a solo recital. But audience members airline reservation systems making their way to the hall should expect more than a serene stroll through Harvard Yard. A pro-Ukrainian group is planning its own cultural event called airline reservation systems the Arts Against Aggression Street Festival, to take place before the recital. On Facebook, organizers urge audiences to Come celebrate the creative power of arts and protest Denis Matsuev s role in supporting airline reservation systems Putin s aggression against Ukraine.
The side-by-side events are only the latest in a season that has seen music colliding with politics at an unusually airline reservation systems heightened pitch. Last month, a man was arrested at another Sanders Theatre performance, airline reservation systems this one by conductor Vladimir Spivakov and the Moscow Virtuosi. The Boston-based group behind the street festival also organized protests of Spivakov s concerts in six cities. airline reservation systems Another Russian conductor, Valery Gergiev, has been similarly embattled in New York and Munich.
In the days when the fate of Crimea and our countrymen is being decided, Russia s cultural figures cannot remain indifferent, cold-hearted airline reservation systems observers, a portion of the letter stated, in a translation published in the Moscow Times. We want the commonality of our peoples and our cultures airline reservation systems to have a strong future. This is why we firmly declare our support of the position of the President of the Russian Federation in regards to Ukraine and Crimea.
Whether their endorsements flowed from sincere personal beliefs, from fear of the consequences airline reservation systems of declining to sign, or from a more calculated desire to secure continued political favor at home, the pro-Putin stance of these musicians is now catching up with them as they perform outside the country. It is also prompting a larger debate, at home and abroad, about the meaning of such letters, the freedom these artists do or do not enjoy, and the ghosts of the Soviet past that some see hovering in the background.
Indeed, Spivakov is no stranger to guerrilla protest in the concert hall. As a young violinist in 1976, while he was in the middle of performing Bach s towering D-minor Chaconne on the stage of Carnegie Hall, he was attacked with a paint bomb that landed close enough to splatter his white dress shirt with red. Yet in a display of preternatural cool-headedness, Spivakov on that occasion did not stop playing or, according to a New York Times review, even miss a beat.
Spivakov showed less steely indifference when the protester took the stage last month during the applause at the end of the Cambridge performance. The demonstrator made a speech that drew the conductor into a brief but heated confrontation captured in a YouTube airline reservation systems video that has since been viewed some 57,000 airline reservation systems times.
In the video, Spivakov can be seen walking to center stage to confront the protester, and facing off only inches away from his opponent. A member of his orchestra steps between them as if to cool tempers. The protester is then hauled away by a Harvard police officer.
Meanwhile, in New York and abroad, Gergiev seems to be veering precariously toward a kind of political radioactivity . Russia s most internationally prominent airline reservation systems conductor and a longtime Putin ally , Gergiev was among the first to sign the March letter an event that came after he had been protested at the Metropolitan Opera and Carnegie Hall in the fall for declining to clearly denounce Russia s anti-gay legislation.
After Gergiev s current season airline reservation systems of politicking, his long-planned appointment to the helm of the Munich Philharmonic apparently was sufficiently endangered that the conductor defended himself in a letter to the orchestra s subscribers last month. Its text is a curious blend of candor and obfuscation.
I cannot ignore the fact that parts of Russian society live according to fundamental principles that are different from those of Western societies, Gergiev wrote. He also concedes airline reservation systems that circumstances of Realpolitik can suddenly infiltrate the common ground of our cultural work and cause harsh and jarring discord. And yet his letter ends with a kind of deus-ex-machina solution, simply prescribing music itself as the best bridge-builder!
Spivakov did not respond to requests for comment for this article airline reservation systems , and Matsuev s Moscow-based manager airline reservation systems conveyed a message through the tour presenter which rented Sanders Theatre for both the Spivakov airline reservation systems and Matsuev concerts that the pianist s schedule in recent airline reservation systems days had not allowed him time to address e-mailed questions. This is a shame . Russian musicians who publicly engage in politics at home should not expect to sidestep the issue s here.
That said, some of their defenders have quietly wondered how free these musicians really were to reject the Kremlin s call for endorsements. Gergiev, as artistic director of the Mariinsky Theatre in St. Petersburg, and Spivakov, as director of two orchestras and president of the Moscow International airline reservation systems Performing Arts Center, are both at the helm of large institutions that are heavily reliant on government funding. airline reservation systems Matsuev too has his own music festival. With the Russian government so financially invested in artistic life, can mainstream Russian classical artists really be expected to oppose Putin?
Lurking airline reservation systems behind all of this is also the question of just how far away the Soviet legacy resides today. airline reservation systems When it comes to classical music, this legacy is both complex and double-edged. The regime ennobled this particular art form, placing it and its most prominent champions airline reservation systems on a national pedestal, while also cynically harnessing music s prestige for the purposes of the State.
In the Soviet era, that prestige was not requested, but demanded, of musicians, under threat of state violence. Stalin called Shostakovich personally in 1949 to ask him to travel to the Waldorf peace conference in New York, and there was only one real answer that could be given. But in the later Soviet years, the terms of the cat-and-mouse game shifted. Today matters are even less clear cut, as the state wields its influence through different channels.
The pianist and conductor airline reservation systems Ignat Solzhenitsyn, who is a son of Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, voiced a similar opinion, in response to questions submitted by e-mail. There is always a choice, airline reservation systems he wrote. In this particular case, with overwhelming support among the Russian public for the Crimea policy, it stands to reason that many of the artists who signed were genuine in their feeling; but others would have felt a strong implicit pressure to sign.
Yet Solzhenitsyn also cautioned against overdrawing comparisons between now and earlier eras of Soviet cultural life. It s an authoritarian system with certain echoes of the Soviet past, but also with basic freedoms and opportunities that Stalin s terrorized intelligentsia could barely have imagined, he wrote. airline reservation systems Any zigzags on Russia s decidedly non-linear path toward freedom should never be confused with the crushing weight of the Bolshevik boot.
Indeed, the Soviet airline reservation systems legacy becomes necessary for understanding the situation of today s Russian artists, but it is not sufficient. If anything, it reminds us chiefly of how deeply music and politics in Russia have long been intertwined. When today s Russian artists are courted by the Kremlin precisely because of their cultural eminence, airline reservation systems these musicians should not be surprised when the Kremlin s actions then follow them, far away from home.
LUHANSK, Ukraine Separatists in Ukraine used a shoulder-fired missile airline reservation systems to shoot down a large Ukrainian military transport jet as it was trying to land at an airport in this eastern city Saturday, killing all 49 people on board, the military said.
The military wing of the prosecutor general s office said in a statement airline reservation systems [that] the office had opened an investigation into what it called a terrorist act . Separatists from the self-declared People s Republic of Luhansk confirmed that they had shot down the jet and said that all military airplanes in the area, which is near the border with Russia, airline reservation systems were targets .
A surveillance video that captured the plane s destruction showed a streak of light rising from the ground, then an explosion near the airport where the plane was making its final approach to Luhansk.
The plane crashed into a barley field about 12 miles from the airport. Parts of the four-engine jet plane were mangled beyond recognition, other items were oddly intact , and all lay scattered about, wholly unguarded by either side.
Brother kills brother. When will this end? said one man, who offered only his first name, Taras. airline reservation systems I heard the plane when it exploded last night. How many mothers airline reservation systems won t see their sons again? And for what?
In Washington, a White House spokeswoman , Laura Lucas Magnuson, said US officials condemn the shooting down of the Ukrainian military plane and continue to be deeply concerned about the situation in eastern Ukraine, including by the fact that militant and separatists groups have received heavy weapons from Russia , including tanks, which is a significant escalation .
Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany airline reservation systems and President François Hollande of France called President Vladimir Putin of Russia to convey what a German government spokesman airline reservation systems called dismay over the downing of the plane.
An online post by a group called Information Resistance, which often conveys news from Ukraine s armed forces in more detail than official statements do, said Ukrainian soldiers at the scene had found empty firing tubes for two shoulder-fired antiaircraft missiles and a third missile that failed to fire.
Secretary of State John Kerry called his Russian counterpart, Sergey V. Lavrov, on Saturday to complain about Russia s arms shipments to separatists and to express concern about the downing of the transport plane, the State Department said.
Kerry also called Ukraine s prime minister, Arseniy P. Yatsenyuk, and assured him that the United States and its European allies airline reservation systems were prepared to raise the costs for Russia if it does not end the flow of wea