This post was first published on Slipped Disc
On the first night of the BBC Proms, the German-based pianist Igor Levit played Beethoven’s Ode to Joy in Liszt’s solo-piano reduction as a token of his opposition to Britain leaving the EU. His was a reasoned and reasonable gesture by an artist who has strong views and wished to express them in music alone.
Not so Daniel Barenboim who, before his Prom last night, announced that ‘Elgar makes the best case against Brexit … because he was a pan-European composer’ and then, from the podium, after a performance of Elgar’s Second Symphony, added ‘isolationist tendencies and nationalism in its very narrow sense is something that is very dangerous’.
This was out of order.
Except on the Last Night, when the conductor gets to say a few words (usually too many) and on rare tragic occasions such as 9/11, the job of the conductor is to be seen, not heard.
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