Valery Gergiev, the principal Russian conductor of the Munich Philharmonic Orchestra, was dismissed as he did not condemn the Russia-Ukraine war and Putin after Munich Mayor Dieter Reiter called for denouncement.
Munich Mayor Dieter Reiter announced the decision after Gergiev didn't respond to Reiter's demand that the 68-year-old Russian conductor change course.
"I had expected him to rethink and revise his very positive assessment of the Russian leader,” Reiter said. "After this didn’t occur, the only option is the immediate severance of ties."
Gergiev has been Munich’s chief conductor since the 2015-16 season.
"With immediate effect, there will be no further concerts by the Munich Philharmonic Orchestra under his direction," Munich mayor Dieter Reiter added.
A day earlier, the Verbier Festival said Gergiev resigned as music director at its request.
Gergiev, a friend, and supporter of Putin is the music director of the Mariinsky Theatre in St. Petersburg, Russia, and its White Nights Festival.
In 2014, Gergiev signed an artists' petition backing the Russian annexation of Crimea while he spoke of his admiration for the Russian leader in a 2018 interview with Agence France-Presse (AFP). He praised Putin for guaranteeing stability in Russia and restoring national pride, saying the president's popularity was something "the Western world has difficulty understanding".
Gergiev, who clocks up an average of 275 concerts per year, had in recent days already been dropped from upcoming concerts at the renowned Philharmonie concert hall in Paris and New York's Carnegie Hall, where he was due to lead the Vienna Philharmonic.
The Edinburgh International Festival has also cut ties with him, as has Switzerland's Verbier Festival, as well as his agent in Germany, Marcus Felsner.
Gergiev was told last week he would be sacked from performances of Tchaikovsky's opera "The Queen of Spades" in Milan's Teatro Alla Scala if he did not publicly condemn the war in Ukraine.
The mayor of Milan and president of La Scala, Giuseppe Sala, on Monday said Gergiev had "not responded" and was therefore unlikely to appear on the podium as scheduled on March 5.
In New York, the General Manager of the Metropolitan Opera, Peter Gelb, vowed that the world-famous opera house will "no longer engage with artists and institutions that support Putin or are supported by him," without naming any specific names.
After eight years at the head of the London Symphony Orchestra, The Guardian newspaper in 2015 accused him of spreading "his considerable talent far too thinly, so that routine and sometimes under-prepared performances have been far too frequent."
In the interview with AFP, Gergiev shrugged off the remarks.
"I have been hearing that criticism for 20 years and that has not stopped me leading great Western orchestras," he replied.
