Jewish Conductor Sets Example for Mideast Reconciliation
By Do Je-hae
Staff Reporter
Daniel Barenboim, a Jewish conductor, pianist and opera director has entered the international spotlight after writing a passionate commentary for the latest Newsweek special on the heightening tension in the Middle East.
He has been campaigning for promoting solidarity between Israelis and Palestinians in much the same way as he strives for astonishing musical achievements. He is also respected for authoring books such as ``Parallels and Paradoxes'' and ``Everything is Connected,'' which was published just last year.
In January 2008, the Palestinian Authority awarded honorary citizenship to Barenboim, upon which he professed a desire to serve as an ``example of Israeli-Palestinian co-existence.''
Barenboim is a firm believer that music can serve as an efficient tool to promote understanding between clashing cultures. His peace-making efforts culminated in the 1999 establishment of the West-Eastern Divan Orchestra, a mixture of some 90 young talented musicians from Israel, the Palestinian territories, Jordan, Syria, Lebanon and Egypt, among other countries.
``It doesn't resolve the problem of human rights or the famine in Gaza. But maybe it gives a model: a society where Israelis and Arabs, instead of destroying each other, enhance each other,'' the conductor told Newsweek in reference to his young ensemble. ``When you make music, you have to express yourself to the utmost and simultaneously listen to what the other is playing. From that point of view, it is a wonderful school for life,'' he added.
Named after a collection of poems by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, the orchestra convenes and rehearses in Sevilla, Spain. The aim was to demonstrate to the world that, at least within the boundaries of music, Middle East reconciliation is not an intangible ideal but a definite possibility.
The musical community was initially fascinated by the novel idea behind the foundation of the youth orchestra and has since taken notice of its riveting interpretations of Brahms, Beethoven, Wagner, Tchaikovsky, Schoenberg and many others. Its concertmaster is Barenboim's son, Michael.
What Barenboim has achieved through this orchestral invention is nothing short of a miracle. Israeli and Arab musicians are partners, colleagues and friends, playing in perfect unison. Political, cultural and religious tensions are obliterated in their common purpose to create the sound envisioned by the composer and articulated by their conductor.
Classical music is essentially an art that requires listening and communicating. As such, it is perhaps natural that a musician of Barenboim's caliber should be equally at home with efforts for resolving one of the most persistent international conflicts.
He was born in 1942 in Buenos Aires, Argentina, to Jewish immigrants from Russia. He was playing the piano at age five and by the time he reached his teens, he was able to play all of Beethoven's 32 piano sonatas from memory, a virtually impossible feat repeated by a only a few pianists over the course of musical history. In his youth, he played for the legendary Russian pianist Vladimir Horowitz and auditioned for the German conductor Wilhelm Furtwangler, who instantly proclaimed him a ``phenomenon.''
Despite his meteoric rise in the 1960s and 70s as one of the world's top recitalist and chamber musicians accompanying the elite of the day, such as violinists Itzhak Perlman, Pinchas Zukerman and cellist Jacqueline du Pre, Barenboim reprioritized his focus on conducting in the 1980s. The world's most respected orchestras like the Berliner Philharmoniker, the Wiener Philharmoniker and the Chicago symphony and others have rushed to engage him.
Currently, he serves as a lifetime director of the Staatsoper Berlin, a renowned German opera company. Amid a rigorous conducting and recording schedule, he has somehow found the time to prepare for his own piano recitals and master classes and accompany leading instrumentalists and singers in celebrated musical halls across the globe.
During an August 2008 performance at the BBC Proms in London with the Divan, Barenboim took a few moments to address the audience from the podium before conducting a Wagner overture.
``Whenever we have come to the Proms in the past, I have always been made to feel that I had to say a few words about what is wrong in the Middle East.'' He then pointed toward the youthful combination of Israeli and Arab musicians, and declared with conviction, ``Well, I'm not going to do that tonight, because you've just heard what is right in the Middle East!''
The audience erupted in a thunderous applause, demonstrating full support for Barenboim's pioneering peace efforts through orchestral music, one of the most powerful mediums of solidarity available to mankind.