Vienna Art Festival Cancels Greek-Russian Composer over his 'pro-Russian stance' (Haltung)

The more things change, the more they stay the same.

Reference is, of course, made to this gem from yesteryear:

Footnote 23: The Czech National Theatre Cancels Tchaikovsky over Russia's 'special military operation' in Ukraine

Translation, emphases, and bottom lines mine.

EDIT: there’s a small issue here that needs to be addressed—Mr. Currentzis isn’t Russian by birth but because in 2014 he accepted Russian citizenship in addition to his Greek citizenship. It is my store policy to keep the original posting ‘for the record’, but I wish to draw your attention to the following update with more details:

Vienna Art Festival Cancels Greek-Russian Composer…UPDATE

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Wiener Festwochen Disinvite Currentzis

Via ORF Online, 12 Feb. 2024 [source]

Originally, artistic director Milo Rau had planned two requiems with the controversial Greco-Russian conductor Teodor Currentzis and the Ukrainian maestra Oksana Lyniv. Lyniv criticised her colleague’s pro-Russian stance. The Festival has now disinvited [hi, George Orwell] Currentzis.

‘In discussions over the last few days, it has become clear that a presentation of both concerts as part of the Vienna Festival is currently not feasible’ [orig. nicht machbar, i.e., ‘can’t do it’], said a statement from the Festival on Monday. Only the work by Yevhen Stankovych will now be performed as planned on 2 June at the Konzerthaus [which recently also ‘disinvited’ a Covid-critical arrangement]. ‘We respect Lyniv's wish not to be placed in a context with Currentzis at this time. Unfortunately, there was no alternative to our decision to cancel the planned concert conducted by Teodor Currentzis, whom we greatly appreciate as an artist’, Rau is cited [hi TINA, once again; what about disinviting both?].

‘I have nothing against Currentzis, but I cannot accept that my name and that of musicians who come from a country that is still being bombed daily and has so many dead to mourn, should be associated with that of someone who has never openly spoken out against the war [what is Mr. Currentzis’ ‘crime’—that he hasn’t said a thing?] and whose artistic ensembles are financed by banking institutions that are very close to the Kremlin’, Lyniv recently emphasised to [Italian News Agency] ANSA.

Lyniv welcomes decision

Shortly after Rau presented his idea of two anti-war requiems, the 46-year-old [Lyniv] had already expressed her disapproval to music journalist Axel Brüggemann and emphasised that it had not been agreed with her that the two concerts would be thematically linked. ‘I have been working on this project since May last year, but it was only in the last few days that I was informed of Teodor Currentzis' presence’, said the conductor in Italy.

The artist has now welcomed the Festwochen's decision and also announced that a contemporary Ukrainian piece by a student of the composer Yevhen Stankovoich will also be composed for the Vienna performance of the Requiem.

Currentzis: No Criticism of the War in Ukraine so far

Currentzis was scheduled to perform Benjamin Britten's ‘War Requiem’ with his SWR Symphony Orchestra. SWR programme director Anke Mai expressed her understanding that ‘Oksana Lyniv and the members of the Kyiv Symphony Orchestra would have liked Teodor Currentzis to make a public statement against the Russian war of aggression. However, in view of the consequences that such a statement would have for Currentzis in Russia, we never asked him to do so.’ SWR accepts the decision of the Vienna Festival and hope to see him again in more peaceful times.

Currentzis has never publicly spoken out against Russian President Vladimir Putin's war of aggression. Rau had already emphasised in an [Austrian Press Agency] interview on the occasion of the announcement that he did not want to avoid the obvious discussion: ‘If we were a weak, cowardly institution, we would say: Currentzis is causing too many uncontrollable discussions.’ But as this is not the case, they are planning flanking dialogue formats, for example on issues relating to boycotts in the arts. ‘The result may also be that we look at such a “case” differently the following year.’ The issue has now been resolved before the start of the festival.

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Bottom Lines: Open Season

This is what we’re becoming—an increasingly inward-looking, narrow-minded crowd of people, afraid of our own shadows and increasingly intolerant of other peoples’ viewpoints. Welcome, dear fellow Europeans, to the fast-tracked Americanisation of our lives.

Why bother to have foreign correspondents or, God forbid, journalists interviewing foreign leaders? We could just simply profess one thing before the act (‘Rau…did not want to avoid the obvious discussion’) and, somewhen before the act, change our minds and lie about it.

Let’s remember that Mr. Currentzis’ ‘thought-and-deed-crime’ wasn’t that he had done anything. It was the opposite—he didn’t say or do anything, except for his continued existence as a man of (partially) Russian origins.

In other words, one of his parents was (is) Russian.

The proper word to use here, Mr. Rau, is Sippenhaft, which awkwardly translates into ‘kin liability’, i.e. (per Wikipedia),

the idea that a family or clan shares the responsibility for a crime or act committed by one of its members, justifying collective punishment. As a legal principle, it was derived from Germanic law in the Middle Ages, usually in the form of fines and compensations. It was adopted by Nazi Germany to justify the punishment of kin (relatives, spouse) for the offence of a family member. Punishment often involved imprisonment and execution, and was applied to relatives of the conspirators of the failed 1944 bomb plot to assassinate Hitler.

As regards its present-day status, we are furthermore informed of the following:

The principle of Sippenhaftung is considered incompatible with German Basic Law [Grundgesetz, i.e., Germany’s de facto constitution], and therefore has no legal definition.

Oh, look, Mr. Currentzis is punished for the ‘crime’ of being born to his parents, one of whom is of Russian descent. What an abomination (and, no, I’m not going to write down what else I think of media portrayals of this absurdity).

While it is, of course, tempting to point to the consistency of Western funding for Neo-Nazis and other ultranationalists in Ukraine while invoking the principle of Sippenhaft here, I wish to note one other thing:

I don’t wish this more than obvious analogy to be seen as me downplaying the crimes of Hitler’s Third Reich, for I consider the above-related example something else: the Americanised ‘reflection’ (like with Hegel’s speculative reasoning via a mirror) of these policies employed by National Socialist Germany.

Finally, let’s not forget that ‘those with the correct views’ (die Anständigen, as per Karl Lauterbach) are currently ‘defending our democracy’—and this is precisely what it looks like.

Last time I checked, ‘our democracy’ included the right to free expression, and even in this regard, Mr. Currentzis hasn’t done anything wrong: why should he say anything? He doesn’t ‘even’ stand accused of ‘thought-crimes’, but he has been punished for being born to a person of Russian descent.

I’m so ashamed today.