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Music

Classical music's greatest political butt-kissers: Dudamel, Gergiev and Rattle

Damian Thompson explores the politics of classical music from the butt-kissing of Dudamel and Gergiev to the German nationalism of Christian Thielemann

14 February 2015

9:00 AM

14 February 2015

9:00 AM

On 8 March 2013, Gustavo Dudamel stood by the coffin of the Marxist autocrat Hugo Chavez and conducted the Simon Bolivar Symphony Orchestra in the Venezuelan national anthem. He assumed, like everyone else, that the coffin contained a fresh corpse: the president of Venezuela was reported to have died from cancer on 5 March at the age of 58.

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