Noa Chorin, Cellist for the West Eastern Divan Orchestra, photographed on the beach in Tel Aviv, Israel. Photograph: Antonio Olmos Courtesy also The Guardian, 13.6.2008.The West Eastern Divan Orchestra performed in Oslo Yesterday 20 August 2008.
- We can play because we are a mixed group of people... We enhance each other! Said Daniel Barenboim, the conductor, to the audience after receiving recurrent applauding in the Oslo new opera (a white marble space with wooden interiors, designed by Snøhetta - a good place for such music and human events).
Co-founders of this orchestra, Daniel Barenboim (born in Buenos Aires 1942, Russian-Jewish parents) and Edward Said (Palestine-American author) took the name from a series of late poems by Goethe during his study of Arabic and Persian verse, Divan meaning 'the other', according to reporter Ed Vulliamy (see link below).
The orchestra when in Oslo played German music - from W. A. Mozart's concerts (Concert for three grand pianos, The "Lodron") and even R. Wagner (1 part of Valkürien), the latter with three excellent singers, Waltraud Meier, Simon O’Neill and John Tomlinson. - Though in the beginning I missed Rene Pape... who was originally scheduled (he was expected to rehearse also for Carlos: Pape is singing in this autumn's big opera event in Oslo, Verdi's Don Carlos, in late September (and he is also coming in early October). Yet, the singers who did perform Yesterday "sang each other up" as we say in Norwegian. It became very moving.
Nonetheless, even more interesting for me Yesterday was to listen to the vital interplays of the young musicians in this highly special orchestra encompassing musicians from Palestine and Israel to Egypt and other nations in the Middle East. "Each of these musicians are courages persons just to come here", explained the conductor vividly to us (the audience).
"They meet in Sevilla each summer" to rehearse, which fits this realworld story: Daniel Barenboim explicitly pointed to the old (but later destroyed) civic tradition in Andalucia - of allowing Jews, Arabs and other people to live and work in the same place(s) in Southern Spain (for more elaboration, see "Abraham's children", an essay by prof Trond Berg Eriksen, UiO, in Morgenbladet, 2007).
I guess it is also attractive for the young very good musicians to meet and work with Daniel Barenboim as well as other excellent music artists. Barenboim was recommended by the conductor legend Wilhelm Furtwängler already as an 11-year-old. Now Barenboim is recreating magic with the new generations of musicians from the Middle East and audiences worldwide.
Thanks for coming to Oslo!
Birgit
Ps let me add some extras,
- LINKS in English:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/2008/jul/13/classicalmusicandopera.israelandthepalestinians
and www.danielbarenboim.com.
- LINKS in Norwegian:
1. "an independent, musical republic..." (Courtesy to Press news of the Norwegian opera and ballet):
"- For meg er dette en suveren, uavhengig republikk. I vårt orkester spiller israelere, palestinere, andre arabere og kristne i full likeverdighet. Musikken er vår store sjanse. Ordene tilhører den argentinsk-israelske dirigenten Daniel Barenboim som i morgen leder sitt West-Eastern Divan Orchestra på Hovedscenen i Operaen. Orkesteret ble grunnlagt av Barenboim og den palestinske forfatteren, aktivisten og professoren Edward Saïd etter at de to møttes tilfeldig i London i begynnelsen av 1990-tallet. Med bakgrunn i hver sin side av den palestinsk-israelske konflikten, fant de fram til en felles visjon for kunstnerisk samarbeid på tvers av politiske og religiøse skillelinjer.
Siden 1999 har det anerkjente orkesteret fungert som en musikalsk og politisk brobygger, de har flere cd-innspillinger bak seg og har spilt i konserthus over hele verden. Etter at Edward Saïd døde i 2003, drives orkesteret videre av hans enke Mariam Saïd foruten Barenboim."
2. For a field research reportage, see this article (courtesy to Morgenbladet, Oslo):
http://www.blogger.com/post-edit.g?blogID=8280192458170847866&postID=39684069094936102
3. For more on Intercultural dialogue, see a seminar 13 Sept 2007 in Oslo by UNESCO and Polytechnic Society: http://www.blogger.com/post-edit.g?blogID=8280192458170847866&postID=39684069094936102
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