Trump Plays in the Wrong Key -- Again

Jamie Stiehm
Tue, 18 Nov 2025 16:47:07 -0800
Opinion

WASHINGTON — Seeking spiritual solace, I washed ashore at the John F. Kennedy Center's concert hall.

Yes, I loved the crashing chords of the "Organ Symphony" by Saint-Saens and the lyrical light notes of Beethoven's Piano Concerto No. 1.

"The Star-Spangled Banner," not so much.
Updated: Wed Nov 19, 2025

WASHINGTON — Seeking spiritual solace, I washed ashore at the John F. Kennedy Center's concert hall.

Yes, I loved the crashing chords of the "Organ Symphony" by Saint-Saens and the lyrical light notes of Beethoven's Piano Concerto No. 1.

"The Star-Spangled Banner," not so much.

Readers, President Donald Trump's new regime at the beloved center decreed the National Symphony Orchestra must stand and play the national anthem before every concert.

How dissonant.

Ballparks and stadiums are fine venues for that tune, but classical music is an international language.

Enter stage left: the renowned French conductor Louis Langree.

This is just one more way Trump leaves his fingerprints on our city scene, after tearing down the White House East Wing.

In another incursion, Trump will take over the Kennedy Center for three weeks, starting Nov. 24, for the FIFA World Cup soccer draw, displacing its year-end programs.

Since Trump fired the bipartisan board and installed himself as chairman, attendance at the national performing arts center has fallen, The New York Times reported.

This Thursday night was an exception, with the 2,500-seat hall almost full. I sat in the third row, rapt as I observed Langree's graceful control over the orchestra as Garrick Ohlsson's hands flew over the piano.

Real leadership was a dream to watch: Langree's mastery over the score's nuances. In fact, the maestro and pianist needed no score. They knew the music by heart.

In a capital besieged by Trump's federal firings and a government shutdown, I wasn't the only one who needed a break.

"The Star-Spangled Banner" offense may seem minor, but the symphony is personal to me.

Growing up, my father took me to the Los Angeles Philharmonic every other Thursday and passed on his love of great composers (though not Mahler). Brahms is his favorite.

Peering through time, I see young Zubin Mehta — an impossibly elegant Zoroastrian — moving his baton in perfect time. In Baltimore, I learned to love Russian conductor Yuri Temirkanov.

When the masterpiece Disney Hall opened in L.A., we attended an inaugural performance by the Berlin Philharmonic, the best in the world.

Sir Simon Rattle, an English dynamo, conducted Schubert's "Great" Symphony No. 9.

Frank Gehry, the stainless steel building designer, was there too. "Going nuts," he told me.

When I told my father about the NSO anthem opening, he expressed shock: "No taste."

The truth is, I'm not standing for xenophobia. In nonviolent resistance, I'd stay seated. Immigration and Customs Enforcement wouldn't come for me.

It's not like the president ever shows up at the symphony. Vice President JD Vance and his wife, Usha, came late once.

I had the luck to sit next to a father and son, a high school sophomore. Like me, the youth studied piano. Unlike me, he practiced hours on his Steinway daily and planned to train at a conservatory.

So we spoke about various Beethoven sonatas and Chopin nocturnes. I said, you could play Nocturne No. 19, my favorite.

He replied, "My teacher said I can play (Romantic) Chopin when I get my heart broken."

Sweet. The deep longings of a Chopin nocturne do churn the heart.

A friend, the author Jefferson Morley, paints a warts-and-all picture of lawyer-poet Francis Scott Key, composer of "The Star Spangled Banner's" lyrics in 1814, after the Battle of Baltimore. He was 35.

A wealthy slaveowner in Maryland, Key later advised Andrew Jackson to name his brother-in-law, Roger Taney, as chief justice. This was in the dark 1830s, the era in Morley's book "Snow-Storm in August."

Key and Taney lived atop antebellum America's pyramid of power. Jackson owned a large slave plantation.

Key prosecuted abolitionists and tried to jail them. In 1857, Taney ruled that Black people, even if free, could never be citizens.

So I don't really like Key's song anyway. Is that bad? France, Israel and Britain have stirring anthems that can make you cry.

As the concert concluded, the hall gave joyful thanks to Langree for taking us out of time and place.

Walking out, I met an older, dignified woman, Ursula.

She told me sadly that these times reminded her of her German girlhood. She was 7 when World War II ended. The little liberties go first.