Pianist Valentina Lisitsa was to begin a great return to the classical world in this year 2022. In five months, she went from a project of complete piano music by Rachmaninoff and Beethoven’s Sonatas to a Putinian propaganda concert in “Liberated Mariupol”.
Saga of self-destruction and the return of old demons. “Yesterday, Mariupol was able to celebrate May 9 freely for the first time in eight years. Ukrainian-American pianist Valentina Lisitsa came to the city and performed a street concert for local residents. » News from the Russian media Mash, with excerpt from the concert in front of a dozen inhabitants singing victory daymade the rounds of Telegram, the Russian Twitter.
We learn in passing that “before that, the artist was in Moscow, where, on May 2, she performed in front of the Ukrainian Embassy in memory of the victims of the House of Trade Unions in Odessa”, information taken up by the online newspaper Pravda.ru, and “that after Euromaidan in her country, Lisitsa compared Azov militants to Islamic State terrorists.”
The YouTube Pianist
In a March article reporting its positions and activities, the media Yamal,relaying “the 360 television channel”, tells us that: “Despite all her achievements, she was deprived of concerts with the Toronto Orchestra. And all because she supports the special operation in Ukraine. This invites us to take a little step back.
Launched in the media for having suddenly been promoted as a “YouTube phenomenon”, Lisitsa was, a little over ten years ago, pushed by the Decca label. She had posted, in 2007, theStudy-tableop. 39 noh 6 of Sergei Rachmaninoff then other videos and found itself overnight with millions of followers, marketing base for a career that was not taking off until then. The pianist, born in kyiv in 1973 and who lives in North Carolina, emerged around 2009 with a peak between 2010 and 2012.
The “banishment of Toronto” does not date from the “special operation” launched in Ukraine at the end of February, but from a series of messages on Twitter deemed hateful and offensive in 2014 and 2015. Lisitsa, a pro-Russian Ukrainian, was then taken very violently to the pro-European political current at the origin, in February 2014, of the flight then the dismissal of the pro-Russian president Viktor Yanukovych. His messages showed, for example, the genitals of pigs painted in yellow and blue, with the comment “here is the face of our leaders”. She also attacked the symbol of the poppy commemorating the dead of the Second World War, not to mention clearly racist messages. The Toronto decision had been discussed, but his career had been immediately affected.
fleeting return
After crossing the desert, a relaunch of said career had been planned for 2022. In January his agent IMG Artists announced a three-year recording partnership with the label Naïve, of the group Believe. Nothing less than a complete work of Rachmaninov and Beethoven’s Sonatas was planned, all the discs being adorned with the acronym QOR, “The Queen of Rachmaninov”, name of the production company of Lisitsa, acquired by her partner .
A disc of Chopin’s Scherzos was released on 1er last April without Naïve finding any problem or indecency in it. Contrary to the statements of the Russian media, Lisitsa played a concert in good and due form at the Théâtre des Champs-Élysées, in Paris, on April 8, 2022.
The May 10 article in the pro-Russian daily Donetsk tells us that, since 2021, Valentina Lisitsa has held an internationally unrecognized state passport of the “New Russia” of the People’s Republics of Donetsk and Luhansk. Yamal informs us that, since 2015, she has regularly performed in “New Russia”. Even more surprising, given the artistic ambitions of 2022, DNR-Pravda of January 28, 2021 reported a speech by the “internationally renowned pianist” to the participants of the “international integration forum “Russian Donbass””. Drawing a parallel with COVID, Valentina Lisitsa called for the “Russian Donbass” to be the model of collective “immunity” in the fight against fascism. An immunity that she invited to share more widely.
What did IMG and Believe know about this activism, and have recent events changed their outlook? the To have to noticed that Valentina Lisitsa’s name disappeared from the list of artists represented by IMG. Becky Farrell, Executive Director Europe, Marketing and Operations at the agency, confirmed that “IMG no longer represents Mme Lisitsa and that IMG has no further comment”. As for Naïve, the company “does not wish to comment at this stage”. An embarrassment is certainly palpable: the artist’s page on the website has also disappeared.