Back when the UK was assumed to be leaving the European Union on 29 March, the Aurora Orchestra was invited to Brussels to participate in Klarafestival: specifically, an evening of words and music ‘celebrating cultural links between Europe and the UK’. And because arts organisations in general (and orchestras in particular) change direction with the agility of a supertanker in pack ice, it went ahead regardless. The cellist Nicolas Altstaedt played John Tavener’s The Protecting Veil with exquisite purity of tone. Ian Bostridge sang Britten’s Les illuminations: brisk, earthy, vividly theatrical. The Aurora Orchestra’s strings, playing standing up, flashed and bristled back at him.
Musicians like to talk about the power of their art to unite and heal. To really sour a mood takes words, though the programme book had promised ‘critical reflection’. A diversity of opinions, then, on a complex subject? If Sulaiman Addonia’s short story ‘A Wild Call’ hinted at grey areas, the other perspectives on offer seemed to have been locked down since June 2016.
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