CREATIVE RESISTANCE TO THE EMPIRE – then and now

Botstein’s program of the Orchestra Now (TŌN) at Carnegie Hall

Perhaps, as maestro Leon Botstein mentioned in his thoughtful remarks at Carnegie Hall’s Isaac Stern Auditorium on October 13, music is indeed our last frontier, “the last of our personal islands,” to retreat to as an individual, amidst a world divided by politics rampant with aggression, propaganda, and war. As such, context matters more than ever.

Botstein’s programs have always eagerly disclosed music’s context, in its historical, cultural, and political landscape. Often examining works by composers of different backgrounds and nationalities, Botstein focuses his observation, in performance and theory, on how they relate through their individual artistic expression. 

His tall figure towered over the podium, at times leaning against its railings for support, as he directed The Orchestra Now (TŌN) of Bard College, which he founded in 2015. As a conductor, he conveys a serene gravitas and composure, wanting to convince his musicians, rather than dictate to them. As an educator and curator, he inspires research into meaningful programs that seek greater historical connection.

If the academic in him always aims to stay politically correct, the musician in him reveals a mischievous twinkle in his eyes when he acknowledges the profound meaning conveyed by music, but also confesses to its elusive nature, which “baffles censorship.”  When it comes to the sensitive political controversy surrounding Russian music after Russia commenced its war on Ukraine, short of inflicting a total ban on all things Russian, he admits: “We probably won’t be able to satisfy everyone, today,” which he exclaimed apologetically but firmly.

His remark—as many who don’t track the labyrinth of the internet’s algorithms, quarried by social media, may not be aware—follows a didactic letter of complaint directed to him personally by the Lithuanian Consulate General. The letter criticized the program’s original title, SOUNDS AND ECHOES OF THE EMPIRE, when presented earlier this month at the Fisher Center and in the concert’s already published PR materials.

Arguing that the original title neglected “to reflect on the historical context marked by the oppression by the Russian Empire of other nations and failed to recognize the Kremlin’s use of that same ideology to justify its atrocities today,” the letter makes the demand for the program to more clearly reframe its existing language of the  “imperialist Russian world ideology, in justifying Russian aggression against Ukraine,” or—setting its ultimatum—to refrain from including the works of the Lithuanian composer and visual artist Mikalojus Konstantinas Čiurlionis in the same program.

Furthermore, the letter takes offense at the explicit pairing of works by Russian composers and those of “lesser known, Lithuanian, Czech, and Ukrainian authors.” Instead, the consulate invites Botstein to attend a 150th anniversary celebration of  Čiurlionis, to be held at Yale University later this year, addressing the Lithuanian artist’s prominence beyond such “sounds and echoes,” but rather “instrumental in shaping the nation’s identity as it fought to escape the clutches of the Russian empire since its annexation of Lithuania in 1795.“

Setting specific geographic and historical markers, Botstein’s program anchored two Russian works: Rimsky-Korsakov’s Overture on Three Russian Themes, Op. 28 (1866, rev. 1879-1880) in its original version, and in the second half of the program, Tchaikovsky’s Festival Coronation March (1883). Paired in dialogue with these Russian cornerstones in the program's first half is a work titled Miške (In the Forest) from 1901 by the aforementioned Lithuanian composer, and Vojenská Symfonieta, Op.11 (1937) by the Czech composer and conductor Vítězslava Kaprálová, a work described as foreboding the looming war. The second half of the program also featured a symphonic work by the most renowned Ukrainian composer of the mid-20th century, Borys Lyatoshynsky’s Symphony No. 3 in B Minor, Op. 50, from 1951 (first edition). Not unlike the works of his contemporaries, Shostakovich and Prokofiev, it had to adhere to the demand of optimism, even in the face of the devastation of war, so typical of the Soviet “socialist realism,” as the Carnegie Hall concert notes suggest. The work, performed in its un-edited first edition, dared to musically comment on the grim realities of the war, rather than portraying this politically correct optimism. Perceived as too divergent from the official façade of positivism and “branded as bourgeois” by Soviet critics, the composer was forced to rewrite the piece.

Fascinating how the facets of history sensitize our reactions and understanding – if with different consequences—as it appears that, following the letter of complaint, “minor works” were now described as “rarely-heard” works, and Botstein changed the program’s title to CREATIVE RESISTANCE TO THE EMPIRE.

An innocent change, as it turns out, but a seductive lesson on how the world of politics impacts culture, then and now.