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This will be our
reply to violence:
to make music
more intensely,
more beautifully,
more devotedly
than ever before.
that music would be the best way to
do this. Together with over
Italian
musicians, we traveled by military plane
across the Adriatic and performed in
a city that was still being destroyed by
bombs. is was the start of a jour-
ney that, in the intervening years, has
taken us to extraordinary places and
given us the opportunity to perform
with musicians from di erent cultures
and regions. It is an annual pilgrimage
that reminds us of the universality of
the musical language and the common
bonds between us all.”
e Roads to Friendship subse-
quently led to a program performed in
Yerevan, Armenia, which was repeated
the following day in Istanbul—it meant
that despite the great history of acri-
mony between the two countries, an
Armenian airline landed in Istanbul
for the rst time. Last year saw Muti’s
musicians joining the Tehran Symphony
Orchestra in performances of Verdi, a
new musical experience for many of the
Iranian musicians. On July of this year,
Muti united the Orchestra Giovanile
Luigi Cherubini and the Orchestra and
Choir of the National Opera of Ukraine
in a concert at So skaya Square in Kiev,
a program that included the
Lincoln
Portrait
by Aaron Copland (a composer
for whom American artistic identity
was inseparable from the dynamics of
cultural in uence) narrated by the great
American actor and Steppenwolf mem-
ber John Malkovich.
Muti’s activities resonated with
particular poignancy this past February
as the maestro led a concert in West
Palm Beach, FL, on the same day as
the Stoneman Douglas High School
shooting in nearby Parkland—as tragic
and, ultimately, as politically charged an
event as America has experienced. He
drew great applause from the assembled
crowd in acknowledging the tragedy
and suggesting that the world would be
a better place if instead of weapons, we
fought with truth and beauty—or “ ow-
ers” as he gently alluded.
“ at’s all well and good for a Muti,”
us regular Janes and Joes may muse.
But what can we lesser mortals do? at
frustration was movingly re ected in a
recent post this writer saw from a young
musician in a Facebook group. “Lately, I
haven’t been able to shake a feeling that
doing music is self-indulgent, especially
in political times like these,” she wailed.
“I feel ine ectual and silly.” e respons-
es were heartening, as group members
reassured her that the arts are now more
important than ever; and one of most
rectifying things we can do is create
music or listen to and support music.
For as Bernstein once said in
response to the assassination of John
F. Kennedy, “ is will be our reply to
violence—to make music more intense-
ly, more beautifully, more devotedly
than ever before. And with each note
we will honor his spirit, commemorate
his courage, and rea rm his faith in the
triumph of the mind.”
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dent for
Opera News
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Chicago Tribune
,
Playbill
,
Chicago
magazine, Lyric
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ANDREAS MEYER-SCHWICKERATH/COURTESY OF THE LEONARD BERNSTEIN OFFICE
RAVINIA MAGAZINE | AUGUST 6 – AUGUST 19, 2018
38