Saturday, February 28, 2009

One step beyond....

Malcolm Bradbury, in his all-too accurate spoof guidebook to the Warsaw pact countries of the 1980s,'Why Come to Slaka?' was perhaps the first to elaborate on the toxic potential of the national operas of Central and Eastern Europe. I have been caught before by these - notably by Paliashvili's 'Absalom and Eteri' in Tbilisi, some hours of excruciating tedium - but ever eager to explore repertoire unknown to me, and hoping that I might stumble on the exception to the rule, I went to Kyiv's excellent opera house to hear 'Zaporozhets za Dunayem' by Semyon Gulak-Artyemovsky (don't ask 'who he?' - I had never heard of him before and won't bother if I never do again). Problems start with the title, which means 'The Zaporozhye Cossack beyond the Danube' - the plot, such as it is, dealing with a Cossack settlement in the the late 18th century Ottoman Empire (i.e. on the 'wrong side' of the Danube), whence they had been driven by.....well, the opera doesn't explain what they were doing there. That's partly because its problems began when it was written in the 1860s, when the Tsar's censors didn't want any references to historic disputes with Turkey....you see, you're bored already, and I haven't even started on the opera itself. The only slightly interesting bit was a set of Cossack dances in Act II, and even those were not original I suspect but had been inserted in a desperate bid to keep the audience awake. Needless to say the locals loved it all. I hope I don't get deported for dissing it like this.

Fortunately the musical balance was redeemed by a performance the next day at the Philharmonia by a young Ukrainian string quartet, who go under the unusual name of 'Post Scriptum'. They have a wonderfully sweet tone, and gave the best live performance of Tchaikovsky's 1st Quartet I have ever heard, together with a passionate rendition of Schubert's 'Death and the Maiden' and an engaging account of Schumann's 3rd. I am hoping we may be able to get them to perform at the 2010 Levoca music festival.

Wednesday, February 25, 2009

The numbers game

I have been fascinated by the comments of 'Bishop' Richard Williamson, reportedly that that historical evidence was "hugely against six million having been deliberately gassed in gas chambers as a deliberate policy of Adolf Hitler ... I believe there were no gas chambers."

This needs taking apart and analyzing; by not analyzing it, the media are in danger of tacitly supporting vicious prejudice. In fact the only person I know of who has made the allegation that the 'Bishop' contradicts - and perhaps he has a lot to answer for in this respect - is Bob Dylan in his song 'God on Our Side' ('though they murdered 6 million, in the ovens they fried'). But not a single historian claims - or has ever claimed - that ''six million [were] deliberately gassed in gas chambers''. All the evidence is however that many millions of Jews (and others) died as a consequence of Nazi policies, in concentration camps by disease and execution as well as by gassing, and by mass-murders and executions in invaded territories (about 100,000 of them in Babi Yar, not far from where I am presently writing). (It is interesting to note, by the way, that, as Mark Mazower points out at the start of his excellent 'Hitler's Empire' , about six million Germans, military and civilian, died from the war and the two years of turmoil following it, and therefore were also casualties of this murderous regime - perhaps the 'Bishop' would be wiling to agree with this statistic).

It is a standard tactic of holocaust deniers to put up the nonsense 'argument' that 6 million were gassed, which is easily demolished. Then you can allege, as the 'bishop' does, that '200,000 to 300,000 Jews perished in the Nazi concentration camps but none of them in gas chambers'. Now we are dealing with 'only' "200,000-300,000 people" - which apparently mitigates the matter - and the argument has been forced to turn on whether or not there were any gas chambers, i.e on the means of murder, rather than the murders themselves.

Arguing about the numbers and the methods only distracts from understanding of Europe in 1933-45. (Or if we include - as we should - the homicidal Russian regime in our assessments, the period 1920-1945). We have not been helped by 'Holocaust education', which with its dismal concentration on gruesome events and statistics may have indeed impeded understanding of the moral and political background to this appalling story, and helps to characterise Jews in student minds merely as victims of a historic tragedy (who, in turn, according to some pundits, 'should know better' as a consequence when it comes to dealing with Palestinians).

This is what happened in the second quarter of the 20th century; untold millions of people died throughout Europe as a consequence of political totalitarianism. 'Punch and Judy' games such as 'it was only 200,000' are just contemptible in this context; and when they are played by a 'Bishop' they become beneath contempt. But when the media just report them in passing and then move gaily on, they become poisonous.

Tuesday, February 24, 2009

Touching

US dollar now quoted 9.10-9.60 hrivnia in the streets, although the official rate remains 8.35 - something wicked this way comes.....

However, here is a fine courtesy which we miss in England. My office is in a 1990s block run by a Government agency. Every morning when the lift is crowded, everyone in the cabin (whether known to each other or not) shakes hands with every occupant and says 'Good morning'; that is, to be accurate, all the men do so - there is clearly some subtle sexism underlying this. If you tried to do this in a lift in England, you would probably be carted off for assault.

Monday, February 23, 2009

Almost at home

This is the first long-term job abroad I have undertaken for seven or eight years, having spent most of the intervening period hanging around at home and pretending to be a student. Mrs. Smerus having had enough of this has sent me out to earn a living, pay for my daughter's wedding etc. - and quite right too I suppose. The first time I undertook such a mission was about 15 years ago, when I was posted to a curious place called Kaliningrad - in fact, I was the first Englishman to live there since the RAF had bomber it to smithereens in 1943, in the days when it was still called Koenigsberg. In those antique times, the internet was still a novelty - I had to explain to everyone carefully about e-mail. Now of course one has broadband almost wherever one goes. The immediate consequence I recognise is the absence of any feeling of isolation, which regularly attacked me in my Kaliningrad days. I can for example skype Mrs. S. and chat face-to-face for as long as we like, free of charge, or have BBC Radio 3 or Radio 4 playing in the background as I work or read. There is also the miracle (which in the present economic and eco-fascist climate may not be long-lasting) of cheap air-fares - one can even fly Luton-Kyiv return (no visa needed) for around £100 - so Mrs. S. can come out to sample the shampanskoye and the opera with me whenever she wishes. It's not much more stressful, in fact, (and a good deal more pleasant), than being posted to Birmingham.

By the way, the hryvnia is now 9 to the dollar and still falling........

Saturday, February 21, 2009

An Eventful Walk

The Khreshchatyk, Kyiv's central thoroughfare, is about a mile and a half in length. You can judge the state of the Ukrainian economy by the fact that, when I walked along it last night, the offered exchange rate in the booths at the start was 8.30 hrivnia/dollar, while by the time I had reached the other end the booths were offering 8.75. If I had been nimble enough, there might even have been opportunities for backwardation, as we used to call it on the London Stock Exchange in my distant youth - i.e. buying dollars at one booth and selling them for an instant profit at another. The pound sterling of course is not as fragile....yet.

Arrival

This is the first post on this blog.....which, before you ask me, is named in tribute to the piano study of the same name by Charles-Valentin Alkan, in his op. 35. However, it will have little, if anything, to do with him, so if you want to know more about him look here or listen here.