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WW 2 concert: Music is a power for peace -Gergiev
(Agencies)
Updated: 2009-09-02 10:46 Gergiev said he did not think the chequered history of Russian-Polish relations, including Polish insistence that Russia apologize for Josef Stalin's order to massacre the entire Polish officer corps at Katyn in 1940, should overshadow his role in the concert, or Putin's visit to Gdansk. "I think if he (Putin) didn't want to contribute to peace he wouldn't come," Gergiev said. Penderecki, 76, said his short prelude, scored for brass and percussion and including a glorious, uplifting fanfare, was a distillation of his childhood memories of the Nazi invasion, and the subsequent communist rule in Poland that ended in 1989. "We had a dark 45 years, first the Germans then the Russians, and now we feel the release," Penderecki told Reuters after a rehearsal. "What you hear in this music is the release, it is not the war fanfare." |
