[Thor Joachim Haga]

Back to the controversial, Eduard Artemiev is another difficult case for me.

I’m a big fan of his music, but he was very passive, politically. He never took a proper stance against Putin or the Russian government in later years. He never took a “Shostakovich”. I assume that was a deliberate stance, because he wanted to keep working and living in Russia. And you can’t do that if you’re too vocal in your disapproval. But it’s still somewhat disappointing. He got to experience the first months of the Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022, before he died in December. I wonder if that changed his stance somewhat? Or if he was too ill at the time to think of anything other than his own declining health? I suppose we’ll never know.

That’s why I haven’t started an Artemiev thread here, really, even if I wanted to. Not least out of respect to our fellow Ukrainian member Ruslan, who occasionally posts here (but it’s been too long…hope he’s okay!).