After attending a wonderful recital as part of the Ojai Music Festival this afternoon, I was moved to write the following response to the celebrated concert pianist Krystian Zimerman’s recent announcement that he would not schedule future performances in America, in protest of the Iraq war.
Dear Mr. Zimerman:
I am not a musician. I am an American poet. My wife is English, and was a concert pianist in Europe for twenty years. She now teaches in America. In the four years we have been married, she has taught me very much about the love of classical music.
When she told me that you had decided not to continue performing in America in protest of our country’s foreign policy, I was, at first, upset for selfish reasons. I was upset as an audience member, deprived of the opportunity to hear you perform in person, and as an American conflated with the actions of my country’s political leaders.
This afternoon, we attended a recital by Dawn Upshaw and Gil Kalish in our home town. The passion and precision with which they rendered Lieder, French song, and American repertoire moved me very much, as it did hundreds of others around me. This experience reminded me, once again, of the power of art to help us become more fully in touch with our better selves. America needs to be more fully in touch with its better self in order to change. America needs more transcendent music, more meaningful art–not less.
And so, I write to you now not as an audience member protesting your decision for selfish reasons, but as one artist to another. If you were simply an entertainer, I could understand your embargo: my country is glutted with entertainment. It distracts us from looking at difficult circumstances, and also from our better selves. But you are an artist, and art has the power to transcend political concerns, addressing, instead, universal, human concerns.
Science has given us a great respect for visible, reproducible cause and effect. The effect of Dawn Upshaw giving herself completely in to song in today’s performance is not an event which I can guarantee will stop a war, open dialog between nations, end poverty, or restore respect for human rights. Yet I know I was changed, and bettered, by this experience. I know others were as well.
In my country, we have figured out how to engineer a hamburger that costs less than one dollar. Yet for all our wealth, when it comes to art, we are starving. By refusing to perform in America, you only add to our hunger. In fact, you are following the same line of policy that my country has pursued in relation to much of the rest of the world: closing off dialog.
Commission, instead, a new piece by a contemporary Middle Eastern composer, and bring this to America. If you want to better the world, do not withhold your gift from those of us who need it most. Instead, bring my country a reminder of our better selves, as human beings, and our participation in the global human condition. Bring the full power of music. And trust that, though it may not make headlines, no act of generosity or kindness is ever wasted, on any people, anywhere.
My country needs–desperately needs–now more than ever, more music, more art, not less. I implore you, as an artist, to please consider this.
Very Respectfully,
Robert Peake
I am currently researching how best to get this letter to Mr. Zimerman. If anyone reading this has any leads, please let me know.
13 Comments
Perhaps send it in care of “Musik-Akademie der Stadt Basel.”
Thanks, Kurt. I appreciate the suggestion. Turns out apparently he doesn’t teach there anymore. But my wife got in touch with Jessica Duchen, and she recommended going through his agent. So, we’ll give it a shot.
Dear Robert,
I wrote a letter, perhaps less selfless than yours but containing basically the same plea, and sent it to Mr. Zimerman via his “management” about two years ago. I also tried, through an English music critic who knew Jessica Duchen, to convey to Ms. Duchen that I suspected Mr. Zimerman had canceled his U.S. appearances for political reasons. This was confirmed in his interview with Ms. Duchen which recently appeared in “Pianist” magazine and on her website. I hope that your open letter to him will reach him and that your plea will not fall on deaf ears. If he won’t let us hear him in person, and he won’t record, we are indeed penalized unjustly for residing in the U.S. I hope to hear him in LA and SF this coming tour.
I suggest you ask Ms. Duchen to convey your letter to Mr. Zimerman.
Good luck.
DNoel
That is a wonderful letter, and true in every way. Great of you to write it. I have been very successful communicating with Zimerman through his agent. I communicated through Tracy Lees at tracy.lees@harrisonparrott.co.uk Of course, that was two years ago, so things may have changed.
I’m a pianist, and my brother is a poet. I found your letter very moving.
Thanks, DNoel. Here’s hoping.
Thanks for your kind words, Rachel. Good to hear there may be hope in reaching Mr. Zimerman.
“…Yet for all our wealth, when it comes to art, we are starving. By refusing to perform in America, you only add to our hunger. In fact, you are following the same line of policy that my country has pursued in relation to much of the rest of the world: closing off dialog…”
Dear Robert,
I am writing you from Belgrade in Serbia, Europe. Some time ago my country was in the same situation. Because of one man (Slobodan Milosevich), USA bombard the whole country. In that time you add to our hunger for freedom. We were starving, we needed a dialog. America decided that bombs will be enough for us. They didn’t kill Milosevich. They ruin our future. Now, I am perform throughout the Europe. I would never come in America – not because of you but because of your president. It’s the same situation, no? If bombs in Serbia were OK then, my absence is OK now. Reciprocity. As a great country, you should show your good will first. Why should artists kneel before America?
Dear Mr. Sinadinovich,
Thank you for taking the time to write this comment. I can not pretend that I am able to fully understand your anger, because I have never lived in a city that was bombed. I must also admit that I do not know very much about the conflict in the region that was formerly called Yugoslavia. I do know that the facts of the situation are not the whole truth. There is a human truth, a human impact, and that is some of what you have shared with me in your comment.
When you speak of reciprocity, I am reminded of the American poet Thomas Lux’s poem “The People of the Other Village.” In this poem, two fictional villages trade acts of revenge, including real atrocities from modern history as well as absurd and impossible acts. Throughout the poem, the people keep reciting, “they do this, we do that.” In the end, they reveal that this has been going on for 10,000 “brutal, beautiful” years. There is a sense of satisfaction among the villagers with this “tradition” of brutality and violence, and it seems neither side will ever give in.
Although the villages are fictional, it is easy to see how they could be referring to parts of the former Yugoslavia, or Rwanda, or many other places. As I learn from others, like you, about the impact of America’s actions in other countries, more and more I see how America could be one of these villages, too. The history of American foreign policy since World War II seems to me to have been overwhelmed by fear of Communism. Fear comes from ignorance. But closing off dialog furthers ignorance.
In writing this comment, you have opened dialog — perhaps not between nations, but between people. People can teach each other, and people are ultimately what make up nations. A child will not become more educated and understanding by closing off dialog, by reducing the child’s exposure to great art, and other cultures. Withholding this only ensures that the child will continue to be ignorant, fearful, and perhaps even grow violent. The same is true of an adult, as well as a whole nation made up of adults (and children).
You say that artists should not come to America on their knees — meaning they should not give in to America’s power. I agree. But I have a different image. One must get down on one’s knees in order to teach a child, and to help it understand. And so, opening dialog is not an act of giving in, but an act of education. Sharing great art with people from a different culture is a remarkable act of education — not in facts, or ideas, but an education in human truth — something beyond facts or ideas. I do not know if any nation can be called “great” anymore. Every nation has its history of ignorance and fear. But those who can help others out of ignorance and fear, into greater understanding, might be called “great.” I believe that artists like you have this power.
With Respect,
Robert
Dear Robert, first of all, I want to apologize for my somewhat clumsy comment that I sent on your letter to KZ. Sometimes I react too fast. It is so hard not to be emotional with the questions of war. Any way, your answer is perfectly logic and understandable. I’ve been poisoned with the politics in a last decade so sometimes I am thinking as a politician. That’s not good because I’m an artist. It is true that we should kneel all in order to understand each other. Not only because sometimes we are acting as children, but before the God. Sorry for my precious rough reaction. Deyan in Belgrade
Thank you for your response, Deyan. It makes me very humble to think that I have often I reacted strongly to situations in my life that are so much less important than what you have been facing in Belgrade. If you do ever come to the West coast of America, I would very much like to meet you. Best Regards, Robert
Dear Robert
I was looking for some reviews concerning the sensational concert I saw last 11st June in Paris, at the Salle Pléyel…A luminous performance from Krystian Zimerman. Yes, my favourite piano player since I heard his approach to Schubert Impromptus…
And looking for some reviews the internet magic show me your website, and I have read your letter…
I think that we must respect the decisions taken by everyone, not only an artist…
You know, the words that really haunted me in your letter “when it comes to art, we are starving”.
You know, I prefer to do not review the concert I felt the other day. But I am going to say that this performance will be always part of my memories…You cannot imagine how haunted I was, sitting in my orchestra fauteuil, listening to the Bach Partita nº 2 and Courante…when you feel that connection with the musician and his instrument, spreading the beauty of the music in a concert hall…when you hear Beethoven, Brahms and played like that…
When you leave the concert hall and walk the faubourg st honoré to find Avenue Wagram and see the remains of the afternoon when the night is pushing the darkness to cover all, you have reasons to believe in art as the thing that can make our lives better.
But for that, we have to feel it, and that is because we need to feel something. I am not so sure that people know what is the essence of the art, its magic. When I am in a concert hall, listening to an artist – like Zimerman, Queyras, Kozena, Bartoli, Bell…so many – I cannot move. I am just a statue receiving all these sounds and these colours that feed me and allow me to have a better day.
You are right…but I can understand, as an European man – I am half french, half spanish – that sometimes people must do more to make things change. And I am sure Krystian’s decision is one of those steps for pressure, in the same way Clooney or Spielberg did with the Olympic Games in China.
Of course, it is easy to speak when I saw this incredible and honest artist on concert the other day, but, you know, I live in Barcelona and Zimerman never came to my city…So if art is not coming where I live, I will go to see art… I got my tickets for Zimerman one year ago…So the best way to see the magic in this crazy and fearness world is to follow the yellow brick road…sometimes invisible…
To individualistic, I know…but considering the hard times we are living…Who is guilty? I do not believe in politics…so I try to find my refuge in art…If I cannot go to live concerts, I hear music, I read books – “On Chesil Beach” by Ian McEwan is my last discovery -, I share conversation with friends and relatives…
It is the only way to avoid the idiocy that surrounds…because unfortunately, education costs money…and the conception people have of art is a wrong and deformed one.
You country needs people like you…people who show some respect in another cultures, in another way of thinking.
But the main problem is that people live in fear, an inducted fear that paralyzes the act of thinking and seeing clearly the reality…and maybe that is the problem to be solved…and a Krystian Zimerman concert in US for a limited and privileged number of persons is not going to change an iron structure of derision to the art, the ideas and the humanity which seems being disolved in the mainstream of an absurd patriotism…
thanks and best regards
gilbert fadda
barcelona – spain
Thanks for your comments, Gilbert. I, too, had the thought that Mr. Zimerman’s actions might only affect a “limited and privileged” group. But the concert last week reminded me that art reaches many people, both directly and indirectly.
It starts with something, perhaps an open letter like yours. Only when he acted and refused.
Why wasn’t there an open letter when a part of his art (his piano he so painstakingly modulates and carries — the actual sound maker under his fingers) was once destroyed, once stripped of the key-board, and once a keyboard was lost at the airport?
The attitudes have been, “I paid my premium. Shut up and keep on playing.” It is a mere commercial aristocracy the Americans are caring about. Where is the reciprocity of love he pours in for the haunting or delightful music he creates? Where is the respect for life?
In Poland, they only got the newly minted Constitution in 1997. They lived it so long — wars and dictatorships in cold war — arms race. Doesn’t missile defense shield smell like another star wars of Reagan? The efficiency is uncertain. The military tension with Russia, certain. Poland has 200-year tangle with Russia. It is not a game to them unlike superpower game players. It is life.
Mr. Zimerman said that it is not playing but living in regard to music making of the Rachmaninov concertos. If his living them moves you, so should his living his homeland. (He settled in Switzerland by not returning home when the martial law was declared in 1981 in Poland.)
As Zimerman said, damages have been made and it takes time to sort them out. Do you notice that the US is changing strategy in Afghanistan? To earn the hearts and minds of the people. It will take time and will be costly in terms of the lives of the soldiers until the tide turns. Soon after the 911, the US had the leverage and sympathy of the world. Long gone with the gung-ho patriotism.
It may take time for the previleged US citizens to realize what they are truly hungry for. And so what to do about it.
Do you notice that Zimerman is crazy about democracy? When he played in Poland, the tickets were sold only in the internet. No special arrangements for the privileged few who could call up the entourage. Recall that Pollini was vigorous on stage about Vietnam war. Chopin players? Chopin became a French citizen. Zimerman never gave up the Polish passport.