A friend (whose name I will protect from the Russian-Metropolitan music
Mafia) writes from St. Leningrad:

>Petersburg, as you had told us, is/was exquisitely beautiful.  However,
>there is a pallor of pessimism among its inhabitants--a definite aura of
>hopelessness (unlike Moscow, which is full of energy and Tartar wildness).
>Our concert at the Maryiinsky Theater was rather lackluster.  Gergiev is
>dour and his orchestra brutally overworked.  He's a bit of a madman, I
>think--obsessed and unrealistic in the manner of a dark Dostoyevskian
>character.

"Brutal" is the right word.  I saw him at a rehearsal with his own
orchestra and it was sickening.  I don't think he'll do that with other
orchestras, but being a competent-to-good conductor doesn't justify
treating musicians like dirt.

His betrayal of his mentor, Temirkanov, wasn't so nice either.  Now,
being a backstabbing brute doesn't necessarily take away from the
performance (when I listen to Wagner, I usually don't ponder his biography)
but Gergiev's excessive success reminds me of the stupid unfairness of
Andrew Lloyd Webber's *former* commercial triumph over Sondheim.  Are there
not a dozen conductors around who would deserve Gergiev's riches much more?

Janos Gereben/SF
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