In Katowice, Poland, a performance ban on Peter Tchaikovsky's third symphony was imposed at the end of March;

at the National Opera in Prague, Tchaikovsky's fairy tale “The Slippers” was removed from the program because the text speaks of the great Russian empire;

in Estonia, activists are campaigning for a general ban on Russian art in their country.

In Germany, people still shy away from taking such a step.

Some may have remembered when Tchaikovsky was last banned in this country: between June 22, 1941 and May 8, 1945.

Jan Brachmann

Editor in the Feuilleton.

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The Baden-Baden Easter Festival unperturbed its focus on Russia - with Tchaikovsky's operas "Pique Dame" and "Iolanthe" as the main works - and did so in such an unexcited, clever way that it served as a role model for other institutions in times of war can have.

The director of the Baden-Baden Festival Hall, Benedikt Stampa, had a full-page appeal for donations for the Ukraine to the UN refugee aid printed in the overall programme;

otherwise one held back with solidarity rubbish and self-relief laziness.

The festival showed morality through accuracy in the work on the art.

Kirill Petrenko, conducting the Berlin Philharmonic, is a godsend as a Tchaikovsky conductor!

His creative intelligence is particularly evident in the first image of Tchaikovsky's last opera "Iolanta": The keynote of this story about a princess who is blind but doesn't know it because her father keeps it a secret from her, and only through understanding her illness and loving accompaniment can be seen is lyrical-elegiac.

That toxic sweetness

The whole first picture is dominated by consolation and lullabies, in which there is a toxic sweetness: life-threatening escapism music.

Petrenko manages to create scenic unity in the concert performance with a continuous pulse through the change of ensembles, choirs and soloists and yet to ensure sufficient contrast with each change so that the drama does not fall asleep.

The close connection between the wind solos and the voices reveals Tchaikovsky as Mozart's most careful successor in the opera: his orchestra does not subordinate itself to the singing, nor is it the omniscient commentator on what is happening on the stage;

his orchestra is one of empathy with the singers.

Even in the vocal solos of Margarita Nekrasova as Nurse Marta or Sonya Yoncheva as Jolanthe, we basically always hear ensembles through the sensitive dialogue between clarinet and cor anglais.

While density is created here primarily through the gestural and color adaptation of the instruments to the voices, Petrenko creates it elsewhere primarily through concentration: the Berlin Philharmonic, although placed on the stage, does not boom where it is not necessary.

Rather, they create tension through targeted internal phrasing and precise articulation.

This delicacy of the game was already noticeable in the unsurpassed vocals of “Pique Dame”.