crummy old wine: What the Middle East COULD sound like

Daniel Barenboim (BBC photo)

Date: Wed, 11 Sep 2002 17:23:45 -0400
Sender: "Mailing list devoted to the discussion of Glenn Gould's work and life."
From: Elmer Elevator
Subject: hope, peace, beauty, courage
Comments: To: planet_mongo_rocket_forces@yahoogroups.com,
undernettmbg@yahoogroups.com, youkali@footprints.net, merkin@his.com,
elsberg@econs.umass.edu

Dear friends on f_minor,

I think sometimes we can get so caught up in some of the small issues of Glenn that we can lose sight of what he did for a living and why such a career is so critically important to the nurturing and survival of the human spirit.

Today -- a day on which a great, unhappy shadow has fallen on nearly all the media, print and electronic -- The New York Times was thoughtful enough to report on a remarkable event.

To my great surprise, the world today is not entirely sabres rattling, dread, fear, hatred, threat, revenge. The world today is not entirely gunfire, land mines and the threat of another war.

Yesterday one human being -- a piano player by trade, like Glenn -- chose, at some risk to himself, to paint a particularly dreadful and violent place in our world a bright and beautiful color. So, in the midst of the torrent of today's mixture of confusion and sadness and worry, I wanted very much to pass this along.

I hope it pleases all of you and helps to returns our thoughts to beauty and peace and individual bravery, and the best things human beings and their communities are capable of.

Bob
===========================

The New York Times
Wednesday 11 September 2002

RAMALLAH JOURNAL

'Moonlight' and Mendelssohn
in the West Bank

By SERGE SCHMEMANN

RAMALLAH, West Bank, Sept. 10 -- The old Steinway grand had seen better days, but when Daniel Barenboim drew the first nostalgic notes of Beethoven's "Moonlight" Sonata from it today, 200 neatly uniformed Palestinian students froze in delight.

Music, and especially music of this caliber from a live Israeli master, is not something that has often graced young lives more wrapped up in the daily misery of curfews, roadblocks, dangers and hatreds.

Mr. Barenboim, the famed conductor and pianist, seemed forgiving of the hoarse old instrument and the many television cameras with him on the stage. The music was a message, which he spelled out after an ecstatic ovation from the pupils.

"Each one of us has a responsibility to do what is right, and not to wait for others to do it," he said. "My way is music. What I can do is play music, play music for you, and maybe this way, in a very small way for these few moments, we are able to build down the hatred that is so much in the region."

His words sounded incontrovertible. But Mr. Barenboim's music has stirred some sharp debate in Israel, most memorably when he led a German orchestra in a piece by Wagner, Hitler's favorite composer, at an Israeli arts festival in July 2001. Many in the audience walked out, and Mr. Barenboim was accused of everything from insensitivity to "cultural rape."

Mr. Barenboim, who was born in Argentina, raised in Israel, and now divides most of his time between Berlin and Chicago, has also been vocal in his criticism of Israel's military crackdown on the Palestinians, often posting his views on his Web site, daniel-barenboim.com.

In March, while Israeli troops were cracking down on Palestinian towns, Mr. Barenboim announced that he would give a concert in Ramallah, the Palestinian headquarters in the West Bank. The Israeli Army barred him from going, saying it could not guarantee his security, and the concert was canceled.

Three weeks ago, on his last visit to Israel, Mr. Barenboim, 59, gave a concert at Bir Zeit University, a Palestinian university near Ramallah. This time, there was little advance notice, and Mr. Barenboim simply ignored whatever restrictions were in force. He declined to discuss how he got in, but a German diplomatic car was waiting for him outside.

After a few weeks of relative quiet, the visit seemed not to generate the same resistance that arose in March. There was no immediate comment from Israel, and the event was given scant notice on Israeli television news.

But for the students who came to the Friends School [a peace activity of the Society of Friends/Quakers], a respected private school, it was a day to remember. Mr. Barenboim performed only the one sonata, and then invited the Palestinians to play for him. Three girls rose to the challenge. Sileen Khoury, 15, gamely worked her way through a Chopin waltz, followed by 15-year-old Nadia Arouri with Mendelssohn's barcarole, and Zeina Amr, 14, who was so nervous she forgot the name of her piece.

Mr. Barenboim told them all they were great, and urged them to keep studying. "It was very nice of him, because he took all the trouble to come here through checkpoints and everything," said Ms. Amr. Ms. Khoury, who said she wanted to continue with music, added that she was "a bit nervous, but with Mr. Barenboim beside me I felt safe."

"Actually it was an honor for us, she said. "The Israelis try to stop us from learning, working, but they can never stop us from playing music." She said she had been studying piano for six years, but her seventh year at the conservatory was delayed because curfews had prevented her from taking her exams.

After the students went back to class, Mr. Barenboim, dressed in a casual white jacket over a black polo shirt, sat down with reporters to pursue his message, alternating comfortably between English, Hebrew, French and Italian. As director of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra and artistic director of the Staatsoper Berlin, he is something of a citizen of the world, and it has been largely his visits to Israel that have brought him criticism.

Mr. Barenboim came this time for the International Chamber Music Festival in Jerusalem, and the police were in evidence there on Sunday after he received death threats. Mr. Barenboim first performed in the West Bank in 1999, when he appeared with Edward Said, the Columbia University professor and outspoken Palestinian, with whom the musician became friends in the early 1990's.

For the past three years, Mr. Barenboim has run summer workshops in Germany and the United States for young musicians from Israel and Arab countries. To people who ask why he made the special effort to come to Ramallah, he said his answer was simple.

"I'm not a politician," he said. "I don't have a plan to end the conflict. But I think the lesson we have to learn from the 20th century is that every human being -- small, young as you or older like I -- has to think of his responsibility as a human being and not always depend on the politicians and the governments."

Anyway, he said, he was happy to be able to speak Hebrew in Ramallah without feeling uncomfortable, and to demonstrate that there are different kinds of Israelis. "The worst that could happen today is that they didn't like the way I played," he said.

As for those who might find fault with the visit, he said, "Anyone who criticizes my being here today, I only have pity for him." In Ramallah, at least, there was no one to pity, and nobody complained about the music. "It's extremely important to have him here," said Colin South, the director of the Friends School. "Anybody of this caliber who can come to the West Bank and play for us right now is just incredibly encouraging. We're very grateful for him being here."

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