Shame Shame Shame! LSO conductor Valery Gergiev leads pro-Russia concert in Ossetia

The principal conductor of the London Symphony Orchestra led a pro-Russian classical concert in the ruins of the capital of South Ossetia to celebrate a crushing battlefield victory over Georgia on Thursday evening.

In front of the blackened shell that once acted as the breakaway region's rebel headquarters, Gergiev, who was born in Moscow but is an ethnic Ossetian, raised his baton to cheers and applause.

From a specially constructed gantry an audience of 300-odd Ossetians enthusiastically waved Russian flags as Gergiev led St Petersburg's Marinsky Orchestra in concert.

The program was specially designed to combine pomp, grandeur and defiance with pathos and grief.

Shostakovich's Leningrad Symphony, written on the orders of Stalin to rouse Russians against the Nazi invasions, was followed by the delicate strains of Tchaikovsky's Pathetique symphony.

Russian soldiers perched on the top of armoured personnel carriers, straining for a better view, as Orthodox priests, Jewish rabbis and even an imam passed through the audience granting benedictions to a self-proclaimed nation united in victory.

As the strains of Shostakovich filled the air, fresh smoke and sheets of flame from burning Georgian villages in South Ossetia rose from the hills - the latest sign that while the war may be over, the plight of civilians is not.

Yet Russian officers refused to acknowledge what was going on before their eyes. "What fire?", one snapped before striding off.

Gergiev, who is godfather to Vladimir Putin's daughter, said before the concert that Georgia's assault on South Ossetia that sparked the Russian invasion was comparable to the September 11 attacks on the United States. "The world doesn't know the truth about what happened in Tskhinvali, there is a huge manipulation of public opinion happening now," he said.

"I am a musician and I am also an Ossetian and what makes me tense is I have friends in Georgia ... but the Georgians do not know the truth."

The LSO stood by Gergiev's participation in the event, despite the British Government's condemnation of Russian aggression in the region.

"We understand that Valery Gergiev feels passionately about the current situation in South Ossetia and Georgia and are aware that he has in the past created music as an ambassador for peace; we send our good wishes to him for a significant and successful concert," said Kathryn McDowell, the orchestra's managing director.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/georgia/2598068/LSO-conductor-Valery-Gergiev-leads-pro-Russia-concert-in-Ossetia.html