[188.1] EAST MEETS WEST

Can there be musical hope as we contemplate another 9/11 anniversary? It seems risky to say ‘yes’, but we have to face the choice. The unsettling confrontation of harmony and dissonance is about reconciling difference, not perpetuating a spiral of deadly conflict. The West Eastern Divan Orchestra is a good example. For the past five years conductor Daniel Barenboim has dedicated himself to the creation of a unique ensemble made up of young Israeli and Arab musicians. Fresh from this year’s workshop sessions in southern Spain, they came to the UK for the first time during the Proms to perform Mozart’s joyful triple concerto and Beethoven’s heroic Third Symphony. And they twinned the music of peace with a lively, hopeful literary and political exchange between Barenboim and Edward Said –- a Jew and a Palestinian seeking common, inhabitable ground and space for indivisible justice in a bitterly ruptured world. May it be so. Thanks to Random Walks.

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