Three weeks after having canceled the concerts of pianist Alexander Malofeev, the Orchester symphonique de Montréal announced this Thursday, “after careful consideration”, that those of another Russian pianist, Daniil Trifonov, which are scheduled for April 20 and 21 in the Maison symphonique, will indeed take place.
Posted at 3:25 p.m.
Updated at 6:30 p.m.
The pressure was great on the OSM at the beginning of March, when the cancellation of Alexander Malofeev’s concert was announced with two days notice. This time the decision could be taken in a much more calm and thoughtful way, and there is a consensus, explains the OSM’s chief executive, Madeleine Careau, on the telephone.
“It was a very circumstantial decision. It was at the very beginning of the war, we were all stunned, we saw people in Ukraine dying, being bombed, we thought it was not a good idea to expose our community to an artist Russian before making up his mind about how we were going to behave with this war. It was a very heartbreaking decision. »
For the OSM, there is no question of inviting artists to Montreal who support Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. But neither is there any question of punishing artists who have nothing to do with this war, adds Ms. Careau, who believes that music “softens morals and brings hope,” and that the OSM “will do everything to provide those moments of peace and happiness, while not supporting horrible conflict.”
After a month, after consulting, listening to our peers, cultural organizations all over the world, reading the media, we saw the movement that was taking shape, which is not to bring war to those who have none the responsibility.
Madeleine Careau, CEO of the OSM
In the case of Daniil Trifonov, the famous Russian pianist, who has lived in New York for ten years, played last week at Carnegie Hall and Chicago, and will be performing in Europe next week.
For Madeleine Careau, this OSM approach is completely in line with the directive announced Wednesday by Heritage Canada, which asks Canadian cultural organizations to “suspend any activity involving the participation of Russian or Belarusian state organizations or of official representatives of these States”, under penalty of having their funding withdrawn.
“This directive confirms the one we had a month ago from the CEO of the Canada Council for the Arts, Simon Brault, not to host artists who are emissaries of the Russian state, or not to use Canadian funds. to go play in Russia. But neither Simon Brault nor Minister Rodriguez is asking us to boycott all Russian artists, or those who have not spoken out against the war. We don’t need to put these people at risk, we need them to make music and come to warm our hearts. »
The OSM also wished to salute the Ukrainian community, and above all to reiterate its wholehearted support. “You should not see the presentation of an artist from Russia as an affront, argues Madeleine Careau. We support the Ukrainian community and we will continue to support it, to show it our support and our disapproval of this war. We hope that she will understand and we trust that people will agree that we should not place the weight of an odious conflict on people who are not responsible. »