Following an extraordinary general meeting, the World Federation of Music Competitions has decided to exclude the International Tchaikovsky Competition from its membership, with immediate effect.
The decision, one way or the other, was expected. Last month, Florian Riem, secretary general of the World Federation of International Music Competitions (FMCIM), told the To have to that “such an exclusion is not an easy decision to make and requires both time and careful consideration of all the arguments”. Mr. Riem had also underlined the importance “of maintaining relations with the other side of the border”, asking in passing: “In what field other than that of culture can we find so many common values? »
However, it was “by an overwhelming majority” that the decision was taken.
“This gesture of banning Putin’s propaganda tool is much more than banishing Russian pianists who have nothing to do with the sad situation”, confides one of the participants in the poll, outraged at the dismissal of pianist Alexander Malofeev by the Orchester symphonique de Montréal in early March. The FMCIM also took the opportunity to reaffirm its position of opposition to “the discrimination and exclusion of individual artists because of their nationality”.
Improvement for Netrebko
Among the emblematic artists of the Russian regime, Anna Netrebko – Vladimir Putin’s representative during the presidential elections of 2012 and 2018, who celebrated her 50and anniversary in September 2021 in the Kremlin, receiving a message of wishes and congratulations from the president — is going much better than a month ago. His violent banishment from Novosibirsk after his comments on the war in Ukraine seems to have served him well in the West. She is in the process of being rehabilitated in Italy (engagements at La Scala and Verona) and in Monte-Carlo, but also in her country, in Saint-Petersburg, thanks to Valery Gergiev.
An artist, on the other hand, is beginning to worry: Teodor Currentzis, whose MusicAeterna Orchestra is financed by the VTB bank, subject to sanctions. The chef, according to the German journalist Axel Bruggemann, would also have been bought shows by Russian oligarchs at the Salzburg Festival.
The Philharmonie de Paris, which has just canceled shows Branch of Currentzis, did not respond to questions from the To have to, but invokes a “material impossibility to prepare the concert”. She also argued to the monthly Tuning fork that for her it was not a question of “taking refuge behind a pretext in the face of an embarrassing choice”.
However, we learn that “discussions were underway with Teodor Currentzis to find out if he was considering speaking, when the problem of rehearsals arose, anticipating a possible cancellation”. The saga has only just begun, because Currentzis is in the sights of the Ukrainian ambassador to Austria, Wassyl Chymynez, for whom “Currentzis and his whole are part of the Putin system”.