A music competition in Italy excludes three violinists from Russia

Violinist Lydia Kocharian said that the Rodolfo Lipitzer International Violin Competition, which is scheduled to be held in the Italian city of Gorizia in September, excluded her along with two female players from Russia.

The Russian player added: “They sent a letter by mail, it was a blank letter with an attachment. When I applied in April, I wrote that I was an Armenian violinist from Petersburg, and I live in Brussels. Usually I send to the event organizing committee, some form of confirmation comes, but this time I didn’t I received nothing from them, I sent the same request twice, and the third time I asked if they had received my order. On May 16 the reply arrived.”

According to her, what angered her most was sending a blank message with a PDF document, without any accompanying address and information. Kocharian described her exclusion as a “fatal mistake”.

“Culture should be outside politics, it should unite people and not lead to such behaviour,” she said.
Kocharian added that Carolina Averina and Anastasia Bentina were also excluded from the competition.

Earlier, the head of the competition, Lorenzo Qualli, said that the decision to exclude Russian musicians was taken along the lines of similar measures in other international competitions, “not only of a musical nature, but, for example, in sports.”