Headlines, Human Rights, Latin America & the Caribbean, Middle East & North Africa

Arab-Israeli Orchestra Spreads Message of Peace in Latin America

Gonzalo Ortiz

QUITO, Aug 16 2010 (IPS) - “The West-Eastern Divan Orchestra has proved that music can break down barriers previously considered insurmountable,” its Argentine-Israeli conductor, Daniel Barenboim, told IPS on a visit to Ecuador.

After performing in Quito Aug. 13, to a standing ovation lasting more than 10 minutes, the orchestra is travelling to Bogotá and then Buenos Aires, where it will conclude its Latin America tour Aug. 25.

“The only political aspect that prevails in the work of the orchestra is the conviction that there is no military solution to the Arab-Israeli conflict, and that the destinies of Israelis and Palestinians are inextricably linked,” Barenboim said.

However, he acknowledged that while the Palestinian population has immense expectations about what these musicians can achieve in support of peace, in Israel the young Jewish members of the orchestra “are considered traitors” by many.

“Understanding is the beginning of any relationship. People must have the courage to accept the narrative of the ‘other’, or at least to hear and understand it, and that is Israel’s greatest responsibility,” Barenboim maintained.

Made up of 92 young people from Israel, Palestine, Syria, Lebanon, Jordan, Egypt and Spain, the orchestra moved audiences in Quito with its rendition of Beethoven’s First, Fourth and Eighth Symphonies.

“Very rarely have we had the opportunity in Quito to enjoy such a concert. And ‘enjoy’ is a word that falls short. We were deeply moved,” music critic Fernando Larenas, editor of the Ecuadorean newspaper El Comercio, told IPS.

A symbol of the surmounting of human conflicts, the orchestra emerged from a music workshop for young people from Israel, Palestine and other Middle Eastern countries created in 1999 by Barenboim and Palestinian philosopher Edward Said, who died in 2003.

Convinced that coexistence and intercultural dialogue can set an example for peace, Barenboim and Said decided to go ahead and form an orchestra that would bring young musicians from those countries together every year, by means of open calls for applications.

Ahmed, a 30-year-old cellist with the Cairo Symphony Orchestra and a professor at the Cairo conservatory, is participating in this cultural experiment for the fourth time. He told IPS he was pleased to have the opportunity to visit Latin America, and happy about the way the orchestra is maturing.

He is most excited, however, that Barenboim has invited him to join him in performing Schumann’s quintet for piano and strings in E flat major at the refurbished Colón Theatre in Buenos Aires Aug. 20.

The orchestra will perform seven concerts there, including Barenboim himself playing piano concertos in celebration of the 60th anniversary of his debut, as a seven-year-old child prodigy, in the city where he was born.

Jaime Mantilla, owner and director of an Ecuadorean media group that includes the newspaper Hoy, told IPS that by using its music to build peace, the orchestra is setting an example for the world.

He also highlighted the significance of the fact that “a multi-award winning artist of Barenboim’s stature” is promoting it and continues to work with it, year after year.

After the concert, Mantilla’s company gave away CDs of “Daniel Barenboim, pianist and conductor”, with a selection of extracts from works he conducted or played.

The West-Eastern Divan Orchestra takes its name from a collection of poems by Goethe alluding to the bringing together of Islam and Europe, Barenboim explained at a press conference in Quito.

In 2002 the orchestra found a permanent home in Seville, Spain, where the Barenboim-Said Foundation has been based since 2004, thanks to sponsorship by the autonomous regional government of Andalusía.

“I never cease to be amazed at the generosity of the Spanish government, which has sponsored this tour to join in the bicentennial celebrations of the independence of Latin America,” Barenboim said in the foyer of the Casa de la Música, where the concert in Quito was performed.

According to sources at the Casa de la Música Philharmonic Foundation, which manages this complex containing several halls, Spain covered costs of 160,000 dollars for the orchestra’s performance in Quito, while the air travel was arranged by Ecuador’s ambassador to Germany, Horacio Sevilla.

Quito was the third stop on the orchestra’s Latin America tour, after the capitals of the Dominican Republic and Venezuela.