Sour Notes: When Art Met War at the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra

News Analysis A deviation from the advertised programme during a classical concert would usually produce, at most, a few disgruntled mumbles from the audience. But Jayson Gillham’s decision to interrupt his recital of Beethoven’s “Waldstein” sonata and Ligeti’s études to play a new work by his friend, the composer Connor D’Netto, set off a chain of events that is still reverberating through the arts world weeks later. Gillham, an Australian-British pianist based in London, was performing a solo recital presented by the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra (MSO). He hadn’t informed organisers of his intention to return to the stage after the interval and not only play a new work—”Witness”, dedicated to journalists killed in Gaza—but also to make a speech to the audience in which he accused Israel of carrying out “targeted assassinations” of Palestinian reporters, of whom more than 100 of whom have been killed over the past ten months....