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was allowed to perform in the Soviet Union—Leonard Bernstein led Dmitri Shostakovich’s Fifth Symphony
to thunderous acclaim, and had the opportunity to meet and shake the hand of the composer after the
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Shostakovich’s “make-good” with the government censors, to Soviet ears, revealing a previously untapped
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Bernstein’s example is particularly
relevant today, as artistic voices raised in
protest are increasingly met with cries to
“shut up and just entertain.” e ’ s are
over, we are told. People are assaulted
every day already by an endless ood of
opinion, from CNN to Fox to countless
internet outlets, without having some
performer jump into the mix. “You are
nothing but marionettes to us,” bellowed
one memorable, aggrieved online re-
sponder to a discussion on the matter.
“Marionettes” or no, musicians have
o en made their political positions
known, sometimes at risk to their
careers. In
the London Symphony
Orchestra made headlines by suspend-
ing four musicians who had put their
names to a letter decrying the presence
of the Israel Philharmonic at the Proms.
e instrumentalists argued that while
the symphony’s leadership espoused that
they would “never restrict the right of
its players to express themselves freely,”
they had done exactly that. Cellist Ste-
ven Isserlis went on record to say he was
concerned that his appearances with
British orchestras would be protested
due to the invasion of Iraq. Polish piano
virtuoso Krystian Zimerman raised
eyebrows in
with an outspoken de-
nunciation of the international policies
of President George W. Bush, and again
in
when he announced he would
no longer perform in America due to
the placement of a missile defense shield
in Poland. “Get your hands o my coun-
try,” he told a startled audience at Walt
Disney Hall.
More recently, European pianist Igor
Levit, the
Gilmore Artist Award
winner who returns to Ravinia on
August for his Chicago Symphony
Orchestra debut playing Ravel’s Piano
Concerto, drew attention for a statement
he made before a concert in Brussels the
night a er the US presidential election
in
. He prefaced his message with
the fact that he was an immigrant to
Germany from Russia, and that in grat-
itude for the opportunities presented
by a united Europe, he self-identi es as
a “European,” not German or Russian.
Levit went on to confront the “trage-
dy” of the culture of fear and mistrust
that had seeped into the politics of the
RAVINIA MAGAZINE | AUGUST 6 – AUGUST 19, 2018
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