Roth at concert: music most radical opposition to war
Created: 03/15/2022, 22:14
Claudia Roth (Bündnis 90/Die Grünen), Minister of State for Culture and Media, recorded during an interview.
© Michael Kappeler/dpa/picture archive
At a solidarity concert for Ukraine in the Berlin Philharmonic, Minister of State for Culture Claudia Roth referred to the power of culture.
"Music is the most effective, the most radical contradiction to war," said the Green politician on Tuesday, to sustained applause from the audience.
"We must contradict this deadly, this unbounded madness, as loudly and as audibly as humanly possible."
Berlin - "Precisely because we cannot stop the aggressor, because we cannot stop Putin, because we have no means of ending this criminal war in Ukraine right now, we need these widely audible signs of solidarity with the Ukrainians ' Roth said.
At the same time she emphasized: “We will not stop listening to Tchaikovsky and reading Chekhov.
I don't want to imagine a world without Russian culture, without Ukrainian culture, without our culture and therefore I oppose anyone who tries to instrumentalize or boycott culture.
It is the culture that makes us human.”
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The concert included violinist Lisa Batiashvili, tenor Rolando Villazón and pianist Kirill Gerstein.
Alan Gilbert conducted the Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin and the Rundfunkchor Berlin.
All those involved had waived their fees in favor of aid alliances.
Gilbert said: "As a human being I find it tragic that we have to do this concert.
It is a response to Russia's brutal actions in Ukraine.”
Villazón thanked the audience, who had paid 25 euros for the sold-out concert.
"We are a very dangerous species for our planet," Villazón said.
"Right now in Ukraine, the worst comes from a person, not from a monster, not from a natural disaster, it comes from the people," he said, referring to Russian President Vladimir Putin.
That is why it is important to “try to give help with love and art”.
But this is not enough.
Everyone has to keep asking themselves: “What more can I do?” Villazón emphasized that every little thing counts.
dpa
