[54.4] BARENBOIM - TAKING A STAND

On BBC Radio 4 tomorrow, 09.00 GMT (repeated 21.30 GMT) Fergal Keane talks to Daniel Barenboim.

"[He is] musical director of the Berlin State Opera and the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, [and] one the most talented musicians of his generation. But it is .. Barenboim's stand toward the Middle East that has most recently put his name into the headlines.

"Daniel Barenboim, who is Jewish and an Israeli citizen, believes that the crisis in the occupied territories cannot be solved by military means alone. He argues that unless the state of Israel embraces 'peace and opens her borders she risks becoming a ghetto'. Daniel Barenboim has played concerts in the West Bank and has brought young Arab and Israeli musicians together with students from around the world. He also took the controversial step of playing the music of the anti-Semitic Wagner in Jerusalem." (c) BBC

In this not-to-be missed broadcast, Barenboim expounds his own convictions about the relationship between music and society. You can listen on-line. The programme remains available for a week after broadcast on the Radio 4 Listen Again feature.

Barenboim has also written 'Parallels and Paradoxes: Explorations In Music And Society', a series of discussions on many subjects, personal, musical and political, with literary and cultural theorist Edward W. Said, which was published in the US in mid-October 2002 by Pantheon Books, a division of Random House (ISBN 0375421068).

It will be made available in the UK by Bloomsbury in March 2003. Pantheon’s fall catalogue describes the new book as “a fascinating, intimate conversation about music and politics between two of the most prominent figures in contemporary culture.”