88 Books & arts The EconomistOctober 12th 2019
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hendianasargsyansat down next
toRashidAliyevfor her first rehearsal
withthePan-Caucasian Youth Orchestra
(pcyo), her fellow violinist’s greeting
shookher.“Wearegoing to hate each oth-
er,”hepredicted.“Weare enemies.” It was
aninauspiciousstartfor the “peace” or-
chestracreatedfortheinaugural Tsinan-
daliFestival, anambitious music event
heldlastmonthona winemaking estate in
leafyeasternGeorgia.Or so it seemed.
MsSargsyanisArmenian; Mr Aliyev is
from Azerbaijan. Their countries have
quarrelledoverthedisputed territory of
Nagorno-Karabakhsince a war in the early
1990s.Theirfellowmusicians included Gu-
linAtakli,anoboistfrom Turkey—which,
aswellasbeingAzerbaijan’s ally, is em-
broiledina rowoverwhether the mass kill-
ingofethnicArmeniansin 1915 constituted
a genocide.Ina performance of Shostako-
vich’s9thSymphony,the strings were led
bya Ukrainianviolinist, Galina Korinets—
whosecountrywasinvaded in 2014 by Rus-
sia,whereVeraNebylova, one of the pcyo’s
cellists,playsinthenational youth orches-
tra.Russiaalsooccupies two enclaves in
Georgia, where Eliso Babuadze, another
cellist,studiesattheTbilisi conservatoire.
Therewere many players in the 80-
strongbandandthewider Tsinandali Festi-
valwhowerenotionally foes. “There is so
muchwarandconflictin this region,” says
GeorgeRamishvili,founder of the festival
andchairmanofitsmain sponsors, the Silk
Road Group, an investment outfit. “We
wantedtochallengethis.” That is not to
mentionthedomesticstrife in some of thecountries represented. Fazil Say, a Turkish
pianist, narrowly avoided jail after criticis-
ing the government on Twitter; at the festi-
val he performed two pieces about the prot-
ests in Istanbul in 2013.
The pcyois part of a trend in high-level
music therapy. In 2011 the I, Culture orches-
tra was formed in Poland, aiming to unite
musicians from former Soviet satellites.
The most prominent ensemble of the kind
is the West-Eastern Divan Orchestra, which
was set up 20 years ago by Daniel Baren-
boim, an Argentine-Israeli conductor and
pianist, and the late Arab academic Edward
Said, bringing together instrumentalists
from across the Arab-Israeli divide.
Acclaimed as it is, Mr Barenboim’s
group suggests the limits of such initia-
tives. Based in Spain, it cannot play in
many countries from which its musicians
are drawn. Relations between members are
said to be volatile. Still, solving intractable
conflicts may be an unfair measure of suc-
cess. “We are not stupid!” exclaims Claudio
Vandelli, the pcyo’s assistant music direc-
tor. “But we hope that this will change the
atmosphere, little by little.”
In this case, the therapy seems to be
working. “From the start”, says Ms Atakli,
“we have seen ourselves as musicians—as
internationalists. Music is a universal lan-
guage.” During a rehearsal break the play-
ers conversed in Russian and English, the
two other languages common to most. At
their hotel they played chess and chatted in
mixed groups. An impromptu salsa party
helped them bond. Ms Korinets, the Ukrai-
nian, finds the idea that she is at war with
her Russian friends outlandish.
And it turns out that Mr Aliyev was only
joking about Ms Sargsyan being his enemy;
he guffaws as he describes her startled ex-
pression. Another new Armenian buddy
has asked to be friends on Facebook. “I
thought, what would my friends think back
home if they saw I’d linked up with an Ar-
menian?” Mr Aliyev says. But “that’s not my
problem, it’s theirs.” 7TSINANDALI
Seekingharmonyina dissonant regionMusicaldiplomacyThefoodof love
Caucasian variationstations of her family’s fabulous wealth”.
The charmed life came to an abrupt end
on September 26th 1944. Legendre’s social
connections had wangled her a secretarial
role in the Office of Strategic Services (oss).
But employment in this forerunner of the
ciadid not requite her yen to “smell the
fighting” before Germany’s inevitable de-
feat; hence a high-spirited trip with three
other Americans to Wallendorf, a small
town in Luxembourg. Wallendorf turned
out to have been taken back from the ad-
vancing American forces by the Germans—
and Legendre became “the first American
woman in uniform captured by the Nazis”.
The question for her captors was what
to do with her. Was she a spy? (The osswas
terrified that she might divulge its secrets.)
Should she be exchanged? “If only your
side wanted to talk, wanted to stop this
useless killing right now,” one of her inter-
rogators complained, “it could be done
with the stroke of a pen.” Could she some-
how be a link to General George Patton
(whom, as it happened, Legendre knew as a
dinner and theatre companion)? After six
months she “escaped” to neutral Switzer-
land, almost certainly with the complicity
of her captors.
Using Legendre’s memoirs, diaries and
letters, Mr Finn—the author of a fine book
about Boris Pasternak and “Dr Zhivago”—
paints an entertaining picture of a remark-
able woman. She was equally at ease in a
flea-infested jail cell as in the comfortable
hotel for “special and honoured” prisoners
of the ss; the other guests included Charles
de Gaulle’s sister and two former prime
ministers of France. Mr Finn’s own writing
shines in his description of pre-war Ameri-
can high society: the sybaritic circuit of
parties, night clubs and restaurants that
meant everyone knew everyone.
The casual racism of the period can still
be shocking. Legendre’s journal from a trip
that she made with Sidney to Germany in
August 1936 makes no reference to the Na-
zis. A letter to her husband in 1942 praises a
Jewish vice-president of cbs, adding: “You
know how I hate jews so that is quite a
statement from me calling a jew alright.” As
for the African-American soldiers who
were dating white women while they were
in Britain, Gertie had a clear view. “The Col-
oured Troops are much argued about as
you can imagine,” she wrote from London.
“We are going to have a time with them
when they get home, as they go over big
here in the worst way.”
In the 1930s the couple had renovated a
South Carolina plantation that became
their home. Sidney, who mainly spent the
war in Hawaii, died in 1948. Legendre never
got over his death, but did not lose her lust
for a life that lasted another 52 years. Sadly
for the reader, Mr Finn is too scrupulous a
writer to speculate on what she made of the
changes to her world. 7