András Schiff, an eminent concert pianist who has boycotted strongman rule in Russia and his native Hungary, said on Wednesday that he would no longer perform in the United States because of concerns about President Trump’s “unbelievable bullying” on the world stage.
Mr. Schiff, 71, a towering figure in classical music, said he was alarmed by Mr. Trump’s admonishments of Ukraine; his expansionist threats about Canada, Greenland and Gaza; and his support for far-right politicians in Germany. Mr. Schiff, who was born to a Jewish family in Budapest that witnessed the horrors of the Holocaust, said that Mr. Trump’s calls for mass deportation reminded him painfully of efforts to expel Jews during World War II.
“He has brought an ugliness into this world which hadn’t been there,” Mr. Schiff said in a telephone interview this week from Hong Kong, where he is performing. “I just find it impossible to go along with what is happening.”
So Mr. Schiff decided to stop performing in the United States. He said that he was canceling appearances this spring with the New York Philharmonic and the Philadelphia Orchestra, and a recital tour this fall with a stop at Carnegie Hall.
Mr. Schiff, revered for his interpretations of the music of Bach and Mozart, is the latest artist to boycott the United States because of Mr. Trump. Last month the German violinist Christian Tetzlaff announced he would no longer perform in the country, citing Mr. Trump’s embrace of Russia, among other concerns.
The small but growing cultural boycott is a jarring reversal. In the past, it was American performers who often canceled engagements overseas to protest war, autocracy and injustice. Now the United States is seen by some as a pariah.
The White House has appeared unconcerned by boycotts by foreign artists, saying Mr. Trump’s priority is the United States.
Stephen Duncombe, a professor of media and culture at New York University, said it was not surprising that performers were shunning the United States because, he said, it is “lurching away from democracy.” He noted that these artists follow a long tradition. Pablo Picasso, for example, refused to have his “Guernica” displayed in Spain until it embraced democratic rule.
Mr. Schiff has been an outspoken critic of right-wing movements in Europe. He has denounced the erosion of democracy in his native Hungary under the far-right populist leader Viktor Orban, a Trump ally. (Mr. Schiff said he could not believe that Mr. Trump had expressed admiration for Mr. Orban: “Viktor Orban is the last person I would think of as a role model,” he said.)
Mr. Schiff has not returned to Hungary since 2010. He told the BBC in 2013 that he faced threats that his hands would be cut off if he returned.
In the early 2000s, Mr. Schiff, who lived for years in Austria, spoke out forcefully against anti-immigrant and antisemitic rhetoric embraced by some conservative politicians there. And after Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022, Mr. Schiff refused to play in the country, joining many Western artists in a cultural embargo.
Mr. Schiff is considered one of the greatest pianists in the world, and has made a number of classic recordings. He holds German and British citizenship, and was knighted by Queen Elizabeth II in 2014. He has been a fixture in the United States since the late 1970s and built a devoted following. He said that he had long cherished the United States as a “beacon of freedom and liberty and democracy.”
It was not just Mr. Trump’s rise that had disturbed Mr. Schiff in recent years: He was also alarmed by some actions taken by the far left in the United States, including efforts to limit speech at universities.
Mr. Schiff said that he waited a few weeks to see how Mr. Trump’s second term unfolded before making a decision about his commitments in the United States.
Mr. Schiff said he agreed that the war in Ukraine should be brought to an end, but that he was taken back by the president’s “methods and manners,” which he called “truly unacceptable.” He was particularly disturbed, he said, by Mr. Trump’s attacks on President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine during an explosive meeting in the Oval Office in February.
Equally distressing, Mr. Schiff said, were Mr. Trump’s immigration policies.
“When I hear this word deportation, it rings a bell — it rings a terrible bell,” he said. “My family, my Jewish family, was deported — some to Auschwitz, and some to other concentration camps.”
Ultimately, Mr. Schiff said, he could no longer appear in a country whose politics he so viscerally disagreed with. “The general election shows that a substantial part of people support these viewpoints and actions,” he said.
Mr. Schiff said that he did not expect his boycott would have much of an impact, but that it was important to speak up.
“Maybe it’s a drop in the ocean; I’m not expecting many musicians to follow,” he said. “But it doesn’t matter. It’s for my own conscience. In history, one has to react or not to react.”
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