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Monthly Musings
December 2006
Tim and I went recently to a concert in Chicago given by the West-Eastern Divan Orchestra. I wrote of this in the March 2006 musing, and urged you to look at its website: http://www.barenboim-said.org . This is a young orchestra made up of Jews and Arabs from various countries, aged between 16 and 25, whose music director is Daniel Barenboim.
The young musicians played Beethoven’s Leonora no 3 overture, the Mozart (or partially Mozartean) Sinfonia Concertante for wind instruments and orchestra, and Brahms first symphony. At the end, after great and much deserved applause, Barenboim made a moving speech. This was not an orchestra for peace, he observed (I paraphrase him), for peace needs to be achieved elsewhere and nobody should overestimate their contribution to righteous deeds and action. It is, rather, an orchestra for dialogue, bringing together Israelis, Palestinians, Lebanese, Jordanians, Syrians and others. Such dialogue needs courage, for it involves meeting with others who are often seen as enemies who strike at the heart of one’s existence. It breaks down taboos and enables conversation, however difficult and agonizing. He mentioned that one such taboo in Israel is the music of Richard Wagner, that appalling anti-Semite yet extraordinary genius, whose impact on 20th century music was overwhelming, for good and evil. The orchestra played, as an encore, the Prelude and Liebestod from Wagner’s ‘Tristan and Isolde’. For all its controversial implications, it was an inspired choice, with its notes of love and death and pain and (until the last moment) unresolved tension. We all stood and cheered to the rafters. The cause is a noble one: but, more than that, the kids played wonderfully – especially the Wagner.
— Martin Forward
