Saturday, August 23, 2008

Gergiev, South Ossetia and the Foreign Secretary

Gergiev, principal conductor of the LSO, has just wielded his famous baton over a pro-Russian concert in South Ossetia. Read more here.

Gergiev, it says, is godfather to Vladimir Putin's daughter.

By the by, the wife of our government's Foreign Secretary David Milliband is a member of the LSO.

Factions among the LSO players are rumoured to be seriously p***ed off at Gergiev's allegedly somewhat cavalier approach to their rehearsal schedule.

These facts are probably quite unrelated but remain vaguely intriguing.

3 comments:

Yoshiyuki Mukudai said...

Valery Gergiev's consert in ruined Tskhinvali, Ossetia

http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=uoZ06uBE4rQ
http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=7rJwVgE0NMU

In case you don't like to watch these concert documents I strongly recommend you all to listen to ABM's Winterszeit CD (LP) issued in 1975 on EMI known as Schumann's "Carnaval," Opus 9 (Winterszeit I - Matrosenlied - Carnaval - Winterszeit II)

(ref.)
http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=AvXv9GhfH4k

Chip said...

While I agree Valery might be pro-Russian, he's also Northern Ossetian and his concert might be just as construed to be about occupation of the Russian forces.... which is what I first posted on my blog.

Then I read a conversation by Valery and he is is definitely cavalier.

Chip
http://interchangingidioms.blogspot.com

amateur misanthrope said...

A nice coincidence: Just this morning I was reading a chapter on Gergiev and the Met from Fiedler's Molto Agitato.

Apparently, the Met Orchestra also had the same problem with Gergiev.