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IJRU /HYLW, ZKR
returns to Ravinia
RQ AXJXVW 18,
has been both an
outspoken and
subtle critic of
international
politics from his
concert stage.
Listening to each other –
this is civilization! The great
music we are sharing creates
a great bond between us and
reminds us of the best that
human life can create and
share together.
US and Europe, resulting in the earlier
“Brexit” vote and the rise of factions
sowing those fears throughout France
and Germany. [He would later “sneak”
an encore of music from Beethoven’s
Ninth Symphony, the o cial anthem of
the EU, into his performance at the BBC
Proms.] He concluded with an entreaty
for collegiality: “Listening to each oth-
er—this is civilization! e great music
we are sharing creates a great bond be-
tween us and reminds us of the best that
human life can create and share togeth-
er. We shouldn’t wait much longer.”
is that music, politics, and
social turbulence have
long been intertwined,
o en with extraordinary results. is
may be particularly notable with
composers who, like Bernstein, create
music for the theater. “Va, pensiero,” the
chorus of Hebrew slaves from Giuseppe
Verdi’s early opera
Nabucco
, so pow-
erfully resonated with th-century
Italian patriots during the
Risorgimen-
to
movement it became an uno cial
Italian national anthem and remains so
today. It’s even heard in Italy at sports
events. In our time, John Adams’s operas
Nixon in China
and
Doctor Atomic
have
gone some distance in challenging the
minds of American music lovers by
providing a re ection of our own topical
political history on stage, as well as in
establishing minimalism as a signi cant
form. Gregory Spears’s
Fellow Travelers
,
which examines the “lavender scare” of
the McCarthy era, has enjoyed remark-
able popularity since its
premiere
[with direction by Kevin Newbury, who
helmed the staging of Bernstein’s
Mass
at Ravinia on July ]. As for symphonic
repertoire, many will remember the
astonishing success of Henryk Górecki’s
ird Symphony, inspired by messages
written on a Gestapo wall in World War
II. e Elektra–Nonesuch recording of
the piece topped the charts in Britain
and the USA for weeks, with sales far
exceeding anything expected for a clas-
sical release. e work’s mournful theme
of children separated from parents via
political strife resonates with chilling
relevance once again in
.
e fusion of music and politics
clearly has the potential to ignite cre-
ativity and serve as a potent vehicle for
social commentary. But can music have
any healing e ect on political division?
Possibly so.
Music’s restorative abilities have been
the subject of endless medical stud-
ies, with lower mortality rates among
those who attend cultural events, sing
in choirs, or make music in some other
fashion repeatedly being found. More
contemporary research from the Uni-
versity of London, however, has yielded
some intriguing results about the ben-
e ts of music in building interpersonal
awareness and understanding across
groups. eir results suggested that mu-
sical exposure may actually heighten the
capacity for empathy, as well as a strong
correlation between the feeling of being
a ected by classical music and empirical
measures of emotional intelligence. e
participants in London’s study showed
a greater ability to identify and reason
with emotional issues, as well as less dis-
placed aggression and bullying behavior.
A curative interface of music with
politics has auspiciously exhibited itself
in a celebrated series of concerts helmed
by CSO music director Riccardo Muti
called “Roads of Friendship.” Now in
its nd year, this remarkable initia-
tive, which began under the auspices
of Italy’s Ravenna Festival, has brought
musicians of all manner of disparate
cultures together as colleagues in the
service of music. e project began in
, while Muti was music director of
Milan’s La Scala. An initial concert took
place in Sarajevo, which was notoriously
besieged and bombed in the early ’ s—
the musicians in Sarajevo received their
music to study some months in advance,
a er which they joined La Scala’s forces
for the event. ey were of di erent
political persuasions, not to mention
religions, yet friendships were formed,
even without an exchanges of names.
“
We started the idea in Sarajevo,”
said Muti, “as we were all moved and
touched by the tragedy that was unfold-
ing there. We wanted to bring a sign of
brotherhood from Ravenna and realized
COURTESY OF THE LIBRARY OF CONGRESS (OPPOSITE PAGE); ROBBIE LAWRENCE (LEVIT)
AUGUST 6 – AUGUST 19, 2018 | RAVINIA MAGAZINE
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