Each artist and his/her work should be evaluated in a wider context, not based on origin - director of LNSO

  • 2023-04-06
  • LETA/TBT Staff

RIGA - Each artist and his work should be evaluated in a broader context, not based on origin, Indra Lukina, director of the Latvian National Symphony Orchestra (LNSO), told LETA.

Lukina emphasized that simplifying the question of the compositions of Russian composers in the orchestra's repertoire to the point that the origin - Russian - means excluding them from the cultural circulation, is very superficial.

She notes that Alfred Schnittke's "Concerto grosso" was recently on the LNSO program. Internationally labeled a "Russian composer," Schnittke has a Jewish father, a Volga German mother, was born in the Soviet Union, and was persecuted by the ruling regime.

"Other composers of the 20th century - Sergei Prokofiev, Igor Stravinsky, Dmitri Shostakovich - have had similarly complicated fates. We believe that each artist and his work should be evaluated in a broad context, to be included or not in the repertoire - we evaluate it according to the content," explains the director of the LNSO .

As reported, Marta Sparnina, concertmaster and violinist of the chamber orchestra Sinfonietta Riga, has refused to perform works by Russian authors during this period of war and recently left the orchestra.