Banned soloist says TSO ‘refused’ to talk
Ukrainian pianist Valentina Lisitsa says symphony misunderstood her political views
“I tried to have a conversation with them but they refused,” says Valentina Lisitsa, referring to the management team at the Toronto Symphony Orchestra that cancelled the popular Ukrainianborn pianist’s guest appearance at two sold-out concerts this week at Roy Thomson Hall.
As the visiting pianist told me Tuesday afternoon at a cafe, she believes the dust-up was all based on a misunderstanding of the political views she expressed online about Ukraine’s troubles.
According to Jeff Melanson, the TSO’s chief executive, “we are deeply committed to free speech, but so many people were offended by her tweets that once we confirmed what was in them, we exercised our contractual right to cancel.”
The TSO had stated that pianist Stewart Goodyear would step in to replace Lisitsa. In a bizarre turn Tuesday night, however, the orchestra announced that the program’s piano concerto was now scrapped altogether — and Goodyear took to Facebook to say he was “accused of supporting censorship, and bullied into declining,” blaming the “mob-like behavior” of Lisitsa’s devotees.
On her own Facebook page, Lisitsa — who became famous with the aid of YouTube clips that also won her a recording deal — wrote that “The TSO is going to pay me not to play because I exercised my right to free speech,” and that the TSO warned her “against saying anything” about the cancellation’s cause.
Late last week she flew to Toronto from her Paris home, accompanied by her husband and fellow pianist, Alexei Kuznetsoff and their 9-year-old son.
In fact, she played another concert on Saturday at Brock University in St. Catharines, part of the Bravo Festival in the Niagara region.
In the wake of the TSO cancellation, Lisitsa had planned to give a free solo concert Wednesday evening at a downtown church. But plans for that were also cancelled because, she says, the church, fearing violence, opted out.
Her version of what happened, her political views and how her troubles with the TSO began are very different from the TSO’s official announcement.
Lisitsa believes a key factor stemmed from her objections to an article published in French by the glossy magazine Elle.The point of the article was to celebrate women, journalists and students who loved Ukraine and were helping raise support for the Ukrainian army in its fight against opponents in the eastern part of the country near the Russian border.
“I was asking Elle magazine if they really knew one of the women they were featuring,” she says. She sent them images of the woman posing with Nazi symbols, Ku Klux Klan pictures and anti-Jewish slogans.
“The magazine posted an apology, saying it was deeply sorry,” says Lisitsa.
But some Ukrainian nationalists “were upset with me for disclosing those things,” she believes. “So this group that claims to represent the entire Ukrainian community claimed that I was inciting hatred against Ukrainians, and that the entire community was upset by my ongoing hateful tweets.”
Her political view, she says, is that civil war in her homeland must be stopped and, to that end, the rhetoric fuelling it must be questioned.
“My view has changed since the revolution started,” she explains. “People were lied to about the economy and getting into the European Union.
“Later there were attempts to divert attention from the real problems to something phantom.”
Her idea of how the conflict should be resolved: a federation comparable to the one that exists in Switzerland, so that Russian-speaking people in eastern Ukraine would not be totally controlled by the central government in Kyiv.
Her political view, says pianist Valentina Lisitsa, is that civil war in her homeland must be stopped
“The war machine needs canon fodder,” she says. “If everybody stops, there will be no war.”
Lisitsa, who lived in North Carolina for some years and speaks English well, scoffs at reports that the Ukrainian Embassy in Ottawa was opposed to her appearing in Toronto.
“That seems impossible, since on March 21, when I played a concert in South Korea, the Ukrainian ambassador not only attended the performance but gave me flowers.” Now many questions loom: Who will win the battle between the TSO and its fired guest artist in the court of public opinion? Where does the TSO board stand? Will this controversy help the TSO raise the millions of dollars needed to pay off its accumulated deficit — or turn off potential big donors?
Will any other orchestras cancel guest appearance by Lisitsa?
Will any other performing artists face cancellations because of their political views?
If you are willing to wait for a year, you can plan to attend Lisitsa’s concert at Koerner Hall in April, 2016. mknelman@thestar.ca