Free Republic

The Hungarian Andras Schiff has announced he will not play in then US during Donald Trump’s presidency. Schiff, 71, told the NY Times: ‘He has brought an ugliness into this world which hadn’t been there… I just find it impossible to go along with what is happening.’ He is particularly upset by the crackdown on immigrants: ‘When I hear this word deportation, it rings a bell — it rings a terrible bell… ‘My family, my Jewish family, was deported — some to Auschwitz, and some to other concentration camps.’ Full statement: Dear Friends, Colleagues and Music Lovers, Due to...

The pianist Andras Schiff has announced that he will never return to his Hungarian motherland. Interviewed in Tagespiegel, he accuses the Victor Orban government of right-wing thuggery, racism, antisemitism and dangerous neo-fascism. ********************************************************* Schiff came under personal attack in Hungary after he published an open letter a year back in the Washington Post, denouncing state discrimination against the minority Roma. He now calls the country ‘not particularly European’ and is particularly incensed at the appointment of two openly fascist directors at one of Budapest’s most important theatres.