These days, geopolitics is everywhere. Just look at soccer’s 2026 World Cup and the fallout that threatens a rift in humanity’s most popular sport. The Eurovision Song Contest, once widely derided as laughably insipid, is now the battlefield for endless disputes about politics. Book festivals have not been spared.
In fact, only one part of international human interaction remains mostly harmonious, and appropriately enough, that’s classical music.
This summer I had a vision. I saw people from all over the world co-exist and cooperate productively and without consideration for anything other than the final product. More precisely, what I saw wasn’t really a vision at all: it was the Verbier Festival, a classical-music extravaganza in the Swiss Alps, where I saw a world that may have seemed normal a couple of decades ago, even one decade ago.
On stages around the small town, I saw and heard musicians from countries that today are often daggers drawn. In one masterclass, I saw one of the world’s most celebrated pianists — a citizen of Russia — instruct a Chinese star-in-the-making in the finer points of interpreting the first piano concerto by Frédéric Chopin, the Polish composer. I saw a globally celebrated German bass-baritone teach next-generation singers from countries including China. (Watch that master, Thomas Quasthoff, sing here.)
And it wasn’t just established stars and selected pupils who had arrived to collaborate. The festival’s orchestra for young musicians reflected today’s musical excellence. There were talented young men and women from most of Europe as well as North America, and also — reflecting the transformation classical music has undergone over the past generation — a significant number from China. South Korea was proudly represented, and so were countries as different as Uzbekistan, Georgia, South Africa and Australia. The results, from emerging and established performers alike, were spectacular. (Hear and see a snapshot here.)
When Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine four and a half years ago, Western concert halls responded by banning Russian artists who refused to condemn the invasion. It was the right decision, although since then most concert halls have reversed course — perhaps believing that with the world’s nations sliding towards more autocracy and armed conflict, they’d have to ban a considerable number of artists.
And yet while the boycott of pro-regime figures may be weaker than in the immediate aftermath of 2022, it still exists.
Verbier’s Russian participants included the star pianist Evgeny Kissin, who has strongly condemned Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and been designated a “foreign agent” by the Kremlin over his support for Ukraine. There was no sign of figures like Bolshoi and Mariinsky director, and Putin ally, Valery Gergiev, who was last year dropped from an Italian festival that would have marked his welcome back into the global classical fold.
That’s not to suggest that classical musicians are invariably saintly types with saintly opinions. Some are, some aren’t. And quite a few are artists with a prickly demeanor; some are bad-tempered, and quite a few have prima donna-like manners. (Prima donna is, of course, a term the world has borrowed from opera.) A few impose wanton demands on concert organizers.
But classical music depends on collaboration between its practitioners: even soloists need orchestras. And in the pursuit of the holy grail of musical perfection, teamwork is indispensable. As a result, in classical music the greatest of the great have no problem teaming up with people who, in other sectors, would exclusively be their rivals. (Watch the legendary Argentine-born pianist Martha Argerich join forces with the equally legendary Kissin — who is also a generation younger — here.)
Classical music is also a borderless enterprise. Orchestras and opera houses around the world perform oeuvres for which they need the best possible performers, and these days such orchestras and opera houses, once the domain of Europe, exist all over the world. China, which once banned Western music, has built dozens in recent years. Muscat, currently in the news mostly because Oman is severely affected by the war in Iran and blockades of the Strait of Hormuz, also has an opera house, built in 2001.
Classical music is not only borderless but also a surprising survivor. For decades, it has been declared elitist and unapproachable, but not only has it endured: it’s thriving. Last year, a survey by the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra in London found that a remarkable 65% of people aged under 35 listen to classical music on a regular basis. That’s six percentage points more than in 2018 and six percentage points more than the share of over-55s who listen to classical music.
Classical music certainly won’t create world peace, but despite the odds against it, it’s flourishing. Indeed, it’s flourishing while virtually every other area of human interaction struggles with the impact of geopolitics and societal polarization. The two ills have, of course, emerged from different quarters, but the harm they cause is equally painful.
Here in Europe, we have to contend with Russian military threats, Russian shadow warfare, and mysterious crises like the sudden migrant influx into Spain’s North African territory of Ceuta — all at the same time. The United States has unleashed a war against Iran and a steady string of threats against allies — and at the same time, the people of Minnesota have seen their water supply breached by hackers apparently working for Iran.
Football, that globally loved sport, has had more than its share of geopolitical pain this summer. First came the unhelpful twists at the World Cup and FIFA boss Gianni Infantino’s link-up with ultra-rich investors, which many described as coming at the expense of the game itself. It was no wonder more than half the football world rebelled.
After decades of seemingly fruitful collaboration, the world’s nations are stumbling into a zero-sum world before our eyes. Sometimes that is fueled by polarization at home; sometimes the polarization grows in parallel. There is no end of history.
And yet classical music is likely to thrive. A few years ago at the Verbier Festival, Kissin and seven other of the world’s very top pianists got together to perform Gioachino Rossini’s rousing ouverture to William Tell. In the comment section on the YouTube recording, someone wrote: “You are watching the Avengers saving the planet with pianos. So thank them.”
Amen to that.
Elisabeth Braw is a Senior Fellow at the Atlantic Council.
Europe’s Edge is CEPA’s online journal covering critical topics on the foreign policy docket across Europe and North America. All opinions expressed on Europe’s Edge are those of the author alone and may not represent those of the institutions they represent or the Center for European Policy Analysis. CEPA maintains a strict intellectual independence policy across all its projects and publications.
