The Violinist Christian Tetzlaff’s Tactic to Oppose Trump’s Agenda: Cancel Concerts

When the German violinist Christian Tetzlaff returned home to Berlin after a recent performance in Chicago, he was distraught. The concert had gone well, but he was increasingly disturbed by political developments in the United States: President Trump’s embrace of Russia, the dizzying cuts to the federal work force and changes in policies affecting transgender Americans.

“I felt like a child watching a horror film,” he said in an interview.

On Friday, Mr. Tetzlaff, 58, a renowned violinist who frequently performs in the United States, said that he was canceling an eight-city tour of the country with his quartet this spring — including a stop at Carnegie Hall — and that he was unlikely to perform again in America unless the government reversed course.

“There seems to be a quietness or denial about what’s going on,” he said. “I feel utter anger. I cannot go on with this feeling inside. I cannot just go and play a tour of beautiful concerts.”

Harrison W. Fields, a White House spokesman, offered a two-word response to Mr. Tetzlaff’s cancellation: “America first.”

Mr. Tetzlaff is one of the first major foreign artists to try to use a cultural boycott to influence Mr. Trump’s policies during his second term.

For decades, American artists have canceled tours as a means of protesting war, autocracy, injustice and discrimination abroad. There were cultural boycotts of South Africa in the 1970s and 1980s in protest of its policy of apartheid, and more recently, artists have refused to perform in Russia since its invasion of Ukraine in 2022.