He is one of the best-known classical music actors of Russian origin in France. For more than fifteen years, chef Tugan Sokhiev has been leading National Capitol Orchestra From toulouse. A position of musical director that he will occupy until this summer. At the same time, since 2014, he has held the same position at the Bolshoi Theater in Moscow. An establishment whose director, Vladimir Urin, decided to sign, on Tuesday, with other Russian artists, a call to stop “special operations in Ukraine”.
With the invasion of Ukraine by Russia, the question of the presence of Tugan Sokhiev during two concerts called “a Russian spring”, scheduled for March 18 and 25, at the Halle aux Grains in Toulouse, therefore arose. “At this stage, he let us know his intention to be present,” said the town hall of Toulouse in a press release on Wednesday.
A letter to ask him to speak
The mayor of the Pink City, Jean-Luc Moudenc, also sent him a letter to “ask him to speak to Toulouse residents about the current situation. He knows that we are regularly questioned, especially as Kyiv’s twin town, by the press, spectators and musicians about his vision of the news”.
Tugan Sokhiev has never positioned himself on international politics. Unlike his compatriot Valery Gergiev, close to Vladimir Putin. The director of the Mariinsky Theater in Saint Petersburg has just been fired from the Munich Philharmonic, of which he was the principal conductor. The mayor of the Bavarian city, Dieter Reiter, had given him until Monday to “clearly and categorically distance himself” from the invasion in Ukraine. Faced with the silence of the Russian leader, the ax fell.
For now, the town hall of Toulouse has not set a date in the form of an ultimatum for Tugan Sokhiev to take a position. On the other hand, she announced that she was already putting an end to the collaboration of the Orchester national du Capitole with the Musicales franco-russes, of which Tugan Sohiev is the artistic director.