He wanted to join The Five and turn it into The Six, but the five composers of The Five thought he wasn't Russian enough.
If the Russian musicians were to cancel Macdowell, Paine, Beach, Joplin, Gershwin, Copland, Brubeck, Cascarino, Williams, and Glass, we'd throw a fit and say it was Slavic stupidity. Well, it's stupidity here too, regardless of where one stands on the Ukraine war.
Utter stupidity. And I’m really embarrassed about the firing of living musicians, such as conductors and singers, for the crime of being Russian. This is seriously wrong.