Orchestra Bridges Mideast Barriers
CHICAGO — The conductor Daniel Barenboim entered the rehearsal room. Musicians of the West-Eastern Divan Orchestra, the improbable ensemble he founded nearly 20 years ago with Edward Sa id, were tuning t heir instruments.
“I’m very, very happy to see you here,” Mr. Ba renboim said to the orchestra, whose members include Israelis, Palestinians and musicians from other Arab countries. “I’m very glad that those of you that have strange passports managed to get into the United States.”
New barriers put up by the United States briefly threatened to derail the orchestra’s current tour to five American cities. Musicians with passports from Syria and Iran, two of the nations named in President Donald J. Trump’s travel ban, got waivers and the tour was allowed to go forward.
And that is how Mr. Barenboim found himself at Symphony Center in Chicago one day to rehearse Strauss’s “Don Quixote.” Which led to an inevitable question: As the orchestra nears its 20th anniversary, and even the seemingly modest dream of being able to play in all its members’ home countries appears out of reach, is the whole enterprise quixotic?
“When I’m with them, it doesn’t feel quixotic at all,” Mr. Barenboim, 75, said. “When I talk to you, I know it is quixotic.”
Quixotic or not, the project has overcome enormous odds since it grew out of a 1999 workshop in Weimar, Germany, that Mr. Barenboim, an Argentine-Israeli, created with his friend Mr. Said, the Palestinian-American literary scholar, who died in 2003.
The group’s simple premise — that getting musicians from groups that have been opposed for decades to play together would foster understanding — seems ambitious today.
The Divan Orchestra, Mr. Barenboim said, was not created as a political orchestra, or as an orchestra for peace, but as a way to promote dialogue — starting with its own members.
“I sat them together, so you had a Syrian cellist and an Israeli on the same stand,” Mr. Barenboim said.
“What do they do?,” he said. “First of all, they tune to the same A. So they have to listen. Then they try to play the same way, with the same bow strokes. They do that for six hours a day, and then they eat in the same dining room. Their attitude changes.”
Mr. Barenboim, who led the Chicago rehearsals in English — dipping into German, Spanish or French where appropriate — could be a demanding taskmaster. But he was also quick to show warmth and delight, and to offer guidance.
“Wonderful. Wonderful!” he said after a run-through.
There has been plenty of tension over the years. The project has been disparaged by many Israelis and Arabs alike, with players sometimes feeling displeasure from their families.
The concert opened with “Don Quixote,” featuring the soloists Kian Soltani, a rising young Austrian-Persian cellist, and Miriam Manasherov, an Israeli violist. And it ended with a rare sight in concert halls: the players hugging one another onstage.