Why do we pounce on Wagner’s anti-Semitism, and ignore that of the Russian composers?

Before ‘nationalism’ became a dirty word, it was the inspiration for all sorts of idealistic and reform-minded people. This was never more true than in the history of music. Clearly, subsequent events have discredited some of those 19th-century ideals. It is striking, however, that we have become uncomfortable with Wagner’s German nationalism while continuing to regard Smetana’s Czech nationalism as an admirable, even inspiring quality. At times one feels that some musical nationalists are given too easy a ride — as if what happened in the opera house couldn’t conceivably affect anything outside it.

A notable instance is the case of the remarkable group of composers which gathered in 1850s Russia around Mily Balakirev and were forever afterwards referred to as ‘the Five’, or ‘the Mighty Handful’. Though there had been some interest in Russian folk music previously (Glinka had already written a couple of heroic operas, A Life for the Tsar and Ruslan and Ludmila), Balakirev’s circle was the first to create a sort of music specifically and exclusively Russian.