Barenboim says

“Music is not only beautiful,…music has to be existential, existential is not always beautiful… music doesn’t [only] round off the corners [soothe]…. And music does not only present the edges of angularity… it does all of that and much more…. music can be round and angular at the same time”…

He says talking about music, thinking about it and using it ( making it work for some other purpose) does not enhance it, it decreases it, and that music will not solve the Palestinian Israeli conflict. But the enhancement that music brings to a situation is extraordinary, it enlarges the possibilities. (He speaks of playing Wagner in Germany with an Arab Israeli Orchestra- which helped to overcome the Israeli taboo of playing Wagner).

The last 10 minutes were the best, he makes a political statement, not anti-any side but voicing his disappointment in the way things have gone and wants the healing to begin. This is followed by the Elgar.

Mr. Barenboim and the young musicians of the West-Eastern Divan Orchestra will visit Brown University from Thursday, Dec. 14, through Saturday, Dec. 16, 2006, for a series of conversations and workshops leading to a concert at VMA Arts and Cultural Center Saturday afternoon. All events are open to the public. A ticket is required for the concert, free of charge.

See link for complete schedule and ticket details:

http://www.brown.edu/Administration/News_Bureau/2006-07/06-060.html

I hope this topic is not the result.

If Iraqi car bombers, having blown up every last car in the country, changed tactics, and started filling cellos and violas with explosives, I wouldn’t consider that a “music” subject.

Can we do something non-topical for a change? I mean, really?

care ot name names, pryounger?

Here you are trying to both tease out a political meaning while acknowledgin the apolitical and criticizing posters like myself who were arguing about non musical issues.

It’s not Barenboim the musician that I was criticizing, it’s Barenboim the man who engaged himself in politics in order to further his career.

Here the poster is still trying to find some extra musical message in the music, though in this case it’s psychological put in the service of the political.

That was the best part of the program.

it didn’t suprise me though that Chris was trying to find some political meaning in music as he does in all art.

In the sense of play, openness and responsiveness that real music requires—and the hearing that Barenboim talks about—are wordless cues for humane engagement of difference and tension. Maybe I’m falling into the same trap Chris did in the interview; but I’ve never been fully comfortable with art-for-art’s-sake positions. I think art should prompt human transformation that can ultimately take the form of political action. Or not.

To the extent that the orchestra had any social purpose it came from the way the young people learned to actively *listen* and eventually *hear* the counterpoint from differing musical lines. Without question Barenboim seems to agree there are transferable values to be learned from this but, here again, he was resistant to making grand pronouncements.

Even by the debased standards of internet discourse, this is really ugly stuff.”

Wrong, PR Young, what is amazing is his being called “Jew Barenboim.”

You really don’t want to hear the truth do you.

Here is an article favorable to Barenboim:

“He has made many enemies, exposing old prejudices with the vehemence of his convictions. A Berlin senator disparaged him as ‘the Jew Barenboim’. At the Deutsche Oper, the conductor Christian Thielemann is alleged to have referred to him in uglier racial terms, an allegation that is being contested in court.

Barenboim shrinks from none of these confrontations. ‘Antisemitism is an illness,’ he says. ‘Some people set out by being anti-Israeli as a cover for their antisemitism. People who see faults in Israel’s present policy cannot be accused of being antisemitic, but I have met many such people who are.’”

His denials and his apology for anti-Israel work notwithstanding people can be forgiven for thinking his criticism of Israel as an attempt to assuage the antisemitism he was met with in Europe.

http://www.scena.org/columns/lebrecht/031203-NL-Barenboim.html

Some of us also think that his “friendship with Said” was another one of his poses.

Barenboim acts like Marano Jew, for those who understand what that means.

Don’t make me laugh.

You wish you knew about SAaid what Mr. Peretz’ does.

By all mean read Said. Read his Orientalism where he describes “the Wests” hatred of the East but refuses to mention European antisemitism. What he does do is attack Jews as “orientalists.”

Read also his artilces in al Ahram, or his so called literary criticism where he can’t tell the difference between a work of fiction and a work of propaganda.

I could go on, but why bother. PR Young (public relations young) isn’t interested in reading critically Said; he is just interested in his ideas about Said.