The New York Times
PALMYRA, Syria — Russia has made its mark on Syria with the crash of bombs and the thud of artillery. On Thursday the Russians added gentler sounds: live classical music echoing through an ancient stone theater and into the eerie, empty desert.
Extending its soft power into the Syrian conflict, Russia deployed a symphony orchestra led by one of its best-known conductors, Valery Gergiev, and the cellist Sergei P. Roldugin, an old and — according to the Panama Papers documents leaked last month — very wealthy friend of President Vladimir V. Putin.
Their performance space was Palmyra, the city of ruins left by Roman and other ancient civilizations and ruined further by the depredations of the Islamic State, also known as ISIS or ISIL.
The orchestra played pieces by Johan Sebastian Bach and two Russian composers, Sergei Prokofiev and Rodion Shchedrin, in a second-century Roman amphitheater, the set for a 2015 film produced by the Islamic State that featured the execution of 25 people.
The contrast was intended to underscore what Russia sees as its underappreciated role in helping Syrian forces liberate Palmyra from zealots and fighting on the side of civilization against barbarism.
The Russians were so eager to make that point that they flew a group of reporters from Moscow to Syria and then bused them to Palmyra to see the performance. The production, attended by a heavily guarded V.I.P. guest list, was broadcast live on Russian state television.
Viewers in Russia saw the concert spliced with videos of Islamic State atrocities, part of a domestic political operation intended to mobilize pride in Russia’s military role abroad, at a time when the economy at home is mired in the second year of a deep recession.
President Vladimir V. Putin at a video conference on Thursday in Sochi, Russia, before a concert by Russian musicians in Palmyra, Syria. Credit Sputnik/Reuters
Mr. Putin thanked the musicians by video link from his vacation home on the Black Sea.
He said the performance signaled “hope for Palmyra’s revival as the heritage of the whole humanity, but also as hope that our contemporary civilization will be relieved from this horrible disease, international terrorism.”
The deployment of classical musicians in territory reconquered, with Russian help, by Syrian forces just two months ago reprised a performance conducted by Mr. Gergiev in August 2008 to celebrate Russia’s victory in a brief war with the former Soviet republic of Georgia over South Ossetia. That Georgian region, also with Moscow’s help, has declared itself an independent state, like the Donetsk region of eastern Ukraine.
Mr. Gergiev, the artistic and general director of the Mariinsky Theater in St. Petersburg and previously the principal conductor of the Munich and then London symphony orchestras, has long been an eager supporter of Russia’s direction under Mr. Putin. He joined other prominent cultural figures in signing an open letter in 2014 in support of Russia’s annexation of Crimea in Ukraine.
Also taking part in the Palmyra spectacle, before an audience of Russian and Syrian soldiers, officials and dignitaries, was Mr. Putin’s friend, Mr. Roldugin, the cellist whose name surfaced last month in leaked papers from a Panama law firm that indicated he had $2 billion in offshore accounts.
Wearing a white cap and accompanied by the orchestra, he played “Quadrille” from “Not Only Love,” an opera by Shchedrin.
Mr. Putin has dismissed the so-called Panama Papers disclosures as a plot “to weaken us from within” and said that Mr. Roldugin had used the money attributed to offshore companies he controlled to import musical instruments.
The dignitaries attending the concert included several foreign ambassadors to Unesco, the United Nations cultural agency based in Paris, which has declared Palmyra a world heritage site.