God Bless Daniel Barenboim
Frodo Bernstein
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August 20, 2006
Music
Harmony Across a Divide
By ALAN RIDING
SEVILLE, Spain
IT was an immensely appealing experiment, both in its idealism and in
its simplicity: Let young Israeli and Arab musicians play together in
an orchestra to show that communication and cooperation were possible
between peoples who had long fought each other.
The two men behind the idea had themselves made something of the same
journey. The Argentine-born Israeli conductor Daniel Barenboim and the
Palestinian-American scholar Edward Said met in 1993 and, though they
were not always in agreement, they forged a deep friendship.
It undoubtedly helped that both lived outside the Middle East. Mr.
Barenboim’s bases then were Chicago and Berlin, while Mr. Said taught
at Columbia University in New York. And it certainly helped that Mr.
Barenboim had been outspoken in his criticism of Israel’s occupation
of Gaza and the West Bank since 1967. But most crucial, both believed
in the futility of violence, and in the power of music to move the
human spirit.
So in August 1999, six months after Mr. Barenboim had given his first
piano recital in the West Bank, he and Mr. Said invited 78 Israeli and
Arab musicians from 18 to 25 years old to Weimar, Germany. There, for
three weeks, Mr. Barenboim, the cellist Yo-Yo Ma and other teachers
gave master classes and individual lessons. And in the evenings Mr.
Said led debates about politics as well as music.
By the end of the workshop Israelis, Palestinians, Syrians, Lebanese
and Egyptians had learned to play together and live together, and the
West-Eastern Divan Orchestra was born. (It took its name from a
collection of poems by Goethe, inspired by the 14th-century Persian
poet Hafiz.) Since then, the orchestra has studied and toured under
Mr. Barenboim’s guidance and baton every summer.
So much has happened since then. In the fall of 2000 a new wave of
Palestinian resistance known as the second intifada led to suicide
bombings in Israel and Israeli military reprisals. After the hopes of
peace raised in the mid-1990’s, the region plunged into another cycle
of violence and narrative of despair. Mr. Barenboim, 63, and Mr. Said,
who died in 2003, always insisted that theirs was not a political
project, but inevitably politics besieged what they had hoped would be
the neutral arena of music.
“Daniel Barenboim is right when he says we’re not here to resolve the
conflict,” said Daniel Cohen, a 22-year-old Israeli violinist, now in
his fourth year with the orchestra. “But this gives me a lot of hope
that, under certain circumstances, we can and should coexist.”
Yet this summer the orchestra’s very existence has been tested as
never before. Just days before the musicians gathered for rehearsals
near Seville last month, open warfare erupted between Israel and
Hezbollah in Lebanon. As a result for both political and security
reasons, a dozen Lebanese and Syrian players decided to stay away, and
a planned concert beside the pyramids near Cairo was canceled.
Still, with the orchestra touring 13 cities in Spain, Belgium, France,
Germany, Italy and Turkey, Mr. Barenboim believes that this latest
crisis merely underlines the venture’s importance.
“From the beginning it took a lot of courage to participate in this
project, but all the more so this year, while this war is going on,
and the friends and relatives of some are being hurt by the friends
and relatives of others.” Mr. Barenboim said in an interview the day
after starting the tour with the first classical concert ever in
Seville’s historic bullring. “In that sense this is a very small reply
to the terrible horrors of war.”
Even so, this year Mr. Barenboim and Mr. Said’s widow, Mariam, decided
that music was not enough. After two weeks of rehearsals, they
proposed that a political declaration by the orchestra be added to the
program for concerts on the tour. The final document reiterated
principles on which the orchestra had been founded: that there is no
military solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and that the
destinies of the Israeli and Palestinian peoples are inextricably
linked. It also said that the project “stands in sharp contrast to the
cruelty and savagery” of the present war.
When they read it to the 92-member orchestra, though, many of the
musicians were troubled. “A lot of things we had not mentioned were
mentioned,” Mr. Cohen said, “and one or two tempers were lost.”
“When I got here, I knew it would be very difficult,” he added. “It’s
not easy to come to a place where you represent something you don’t
believe in yourself. And you have people here who have suffered
personally.”
But some Israelis complained loudly that one sentence equated the
warring parties. “The Israeli government’s destruction of life-giving
infrastructure in Lebanon and Gaza, uprooting a million people and
inflicting heavy casualties on civilians, and Hezbollah’s
indiscriminate shelling of civilians in northern Israel are in total
opposition to what we believe in,” it said.
In the end, after heated debate, the declaration was approved, with
six Israelis and one Egyptian voting against it. But the intrusion of
politics clearly left a mark on what Mr. Cohen called “this nice
little utopia.”
Mina Zikri, 28, the Chicago-based Egyptian violinist who had opposed
the declaration, explained: “Here I deal with my friend Daniel Cohen
who happens to be an Israeli. But when the declaration was made, it
undermined the basis for being here — that we are here as equals, as
human beings, not as political identities.”
In contrast, Tyme Khleifi, 17, a Palestinian violinist, felt that the
declaration was necessary. “It’s not like we’re detached from what’s
happening,” she said softly. “We came here knowing that things were
not O.K. You don’t have to agree on everything to be friends.”
Despite the recent discord, the orchestra remains one of the few
forums for exchanges between people “living on different planets,” as
Mr. Cohen put it. “It opened my eyes,” he said. “I lived 25 minutes
from the border, and I had never met a Palestinian or an Arab until I
met Tyme here four years ago.”
Not all the young musicians socialize outside their own groups, but
many friendships have crossed these invisible barriers. Passion too
has occasionally proved stronger than politics. “It must be very
exciting sleeping with the enemy,” Mr. Barenboim joked.
To whatever extent they do choose to socialize, all the players share
a devotion to the music. In many ways the hard work takes place before
each summer’s tour at a former seminary in Pilas, 20 miles west of
Seville, that has been the orchestra’s base since 2002.
This year the musicians worked individually and in groups with Mr.
Barenboim and 13 instrumentalists from the Berlin Staatskapelle, for
which Mr. Barenboim holds the title of chief conductor for life. (The
Staatskapelle is also the house orchestra for the Deutsche Staatsoper
Berlin, where Mr. Barenboim is general music director.) “We have music
going from 9 a.m. until midnight while we are here,” he said, noting
that the musicians also form ad hoc string quartets and other chamber
groups.
Ms. Khleifi said: “I had never played in an orchestra before coming
here. I learned how an orchestra was meant to sound from a
professional perspective. We have good teachers, and the maestro
coaches us. He’s always saying things we find useful.”
By now members of the orchestra are also making their mark elsewhere.
Mr. Cohen, who is studying at the Royal Academy of Music in London,
and Mr. Zikri, in Chicago, have both formed their own orchestras.
Others have joined orchestras in Jerusalem, Cairo, Damascus and, in
the case of the Egyptian double bassist Nabil Shehata, even the Berlin
Philharmonic.
At the Seville concert on Aug. 8 the orchestra performed Beethoven’s
Ninth Symphony before an enthusiastic audience of 5,000. From there it
embarked on an intense schedule that is to include its first
appearances at the Berlin Philharmonie and the Teatro Alla Scala in
Milan. On its program are Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony, his “Leonore”
Overture No. 3, Mozart’s sinfonia concertante for winds, Bottesini’s
“Fantasia on Themes by Rossini” and Brahms’s First Symphony.
In a change from the orchestra’s early years, it now includes Spanish
players, about 20 percent, as part of a deal with Andalusia’s regional
government. That agreement provides a $3.9 million annual subsidy,
which has enabled the Barenboim-Said Foundation to run music teaching
projects in the West Bank and an academy of orchestral studies in
Seville as well as the West-Eastern Divan Orchestra.
“I once asked Manuel Chaves why he did it,” Mr. Barenboim said of the
Andalusian president, “and he said: ‘It’s very simple. If Spain today
is what it is, and especially Andalusia, it’s because Muslims, Jews
and Christians lived and created here for many centuries. And if I can
give a little back, it’s my duty.’ ”
Mr. Barenboim can boast that diversity in his trombone section alone,
which includes a Palestinian Muslim, an Israeli Jew and a Spanish
Roman Catholic. But “before Beethoven’s Ninth,” he said, nationality
and religion are of no importance. “In music you learn to express
yourself while listening to what the other is saying,” he went on. “It
is a school for life, a school for understanding the point of view of
the other and adjusting yours.”
In that sense, he said, this year’s declaration and the debate that
followed formed part of the orchestra’s democratic experience, even as
it reminded the group of the Middle East’s realities.
While the orchestra has appeared across Europe and is scheduled to
perform in New York in December, it has played only twice to Arab
audiences — in Rabat, Morocco, in 2003 and in Ramallah on the West
Bank last August — and never in Israel.
“Even in Ramallah, there were voices of dissent in Palestinian
society,” Mr. Barenboim said. “People asked, ‘How can we go to this
concert when there are Israeli tanks in our streets?’ And I replied,
‘The fact that the orchestra plays so well together does not mean that
everything is beautiful and we can forget reality.’ The truth is,
there would be no need for this project if there were no conflict.”
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Francisco López
demonstrated again today in the concert performed in La Alhambra de Granada.
Never in my life I've heard the 2nd movement od the 1st Symphony by Bhaams
conducted (and played by these very, very young musicians) with such sense
of...voluptuosity. And the energy generetaded in the Finale! Ravishing. The
Furtwängler lesson updated, and very well. If you add to his stature as
musician, his clear view on politics, you have a really giant! It was clear
today that he generated something more in their musicians than music; it was
an spiritual energy, very, very special. Wonderful concert, wonderful
musicians (still they have to learn, sure, but, really, the way they played
the music made me remember of the very old Giulini playing the sema symphony
with a young Spanish orchestra, years ago), wonderful director, and a
pleasure see an artist of such stature without fear of making political
statment on that bloody war, without being naïve.
"Frodo Bernstein" <fro...@middleearth.net> escribió en el mensaje
news:l65he2lqipjcjvoot...@4ax.com...
> undermined the basis for being here - that we are here as equals, as
> audiences - in Rabat, Morocco, in 2003 and in Ramallah on the West
> Bank last August - and never in Israel.
Michael Lehrman
news:Mb4Gg.13666$MA3....@news.ono.com...
> Yes, God bless Mr. Barenboim.
Thanks for adding your 2KB to Frodo's 11KB.
ML
david...@aol.com
It may well be that his young orchestra brings out the best in
Barenboim. Let's hope so. I love the guy because I've heard him give
unassailable performances in repertory that I'm passionate about, but
something like 80% of the time, nothing much seems to happen.
-david gable