West-Eastern Divan Orchestra
The West-Eastern Divan Orchestra ( WEDO , German Orchester des West-Ostlichen Divans ) is a symphony orchestra founded in 1999 , which consists of Israeli and Arab musicians in equal parts. The ensemble was founded by Daniel Barenboim , Edward Said and Bernd Kauffmann and is committed to peaceful solutions to the Middle East conflict . It is a guest worldwide.
idea
The founders - Said died in 2003 - shared the vision of peaceful coexistence between peoples in the Middle East . The name is derived from the West-Eastern Divan , a collection of poems to which Johann Wolfgang von Goethe was inspired by the Persian poet Hafiz and his Dīwān (collection of poems).
The ensemble was founded in 1999 in Weimar as part of the European Capital of Culture by the Argentine - Israeli conductor Daniel Barenboim, the American literary scholar Edward Said, who was born in Palestine , and the then General Representative of the European Capital of Culture, Bernd Kauffmann, and consists of young musicians aged 14 up to 25 years old, who come from Egypt , Syria , Iran , Lebanon , Jordan , Tunisia , Israel , Palestine and Andalusia and meet once a year for a work period and a subsequent performance period. After two phases of work and performance in Weimar in 1999 and 2000, the current seat of the orchestra is in Seville . In 2007 the orchestra was awarded the Praemium Imperiale Grant for Young Artists .
Musical and peace work
In August 1999, the musicians' first working meeting took place in Weimar . In 2000 the musicians met again in Weimar, 2001 in Chicago and since 2002 in Seville in the Spanish autonomous region of Andalusia. In al-Andalus , the Muslim-ruled parts of the Iberian Peninsula , there was extensive religious freedom between 711 and 1492 . In the province of Granada , Jews , Muslims and Christians lived together peacefully and mutually enriching for centuries . The orchestra regularly takes the summer tours across several continents. One of Barenboim's main goals is to have the orchestra play in all the musicians' countries of origin.
“The only political aspect of the work of the West-Eastern Divan Orchestra is the conviction that there can be no military solution to the Middle East conflict and that the fates of Israelis and Palestinians are inextricably linked. Of course, music alone cannot solve the Arab-Israeli conflict. However, it gives the individual the right and the obligation to express himself fully and to listen to the neighbor. "
In 2003, the orchestra performed in an Arab country for the first time with a concert in Rabat ( Morocco ). In August 2005, a highly acclaimed concert was held in Ramallah and it was broadcast live on television in many countries. In 2014 the ensemble performed in Doha ( Qatar ) and in 2014 in Abu Dhabi . Performances in Israel or Egypt have not yet been possible.
As part of a concert series in South Korea, a peace concert took place on August 15, 2011 on the border with communist North Korea . Barenboim and the West-Eastern Divan Orchestra performed Beethoven's 9th Symphony .
The orchestra has been awarding commissioned works to composers from the Middle East since the beginning of the 2010s: In 2013 the piece Que la lumière soit by the Jordanian composer Saed Haddad and At the Fringe of Our Gaze by the Israeli composer Chaya Czernowin were premiered at the Lucerne Festival . New orchestral works by Israeli Adal Adler and Syrian Kareem Roustom followed in 2014 , premiered at the Teatro Colón in Buenos Aires, and then presented in Lucerne, Salzburg and London .
On the occasion of the 10th anniversary of the death of founder Edward Said , the orchestra - together with the Center for Palestine Studies at Columbia University in New York City - organized a discourse between Judith Butler and Cornel West as well as lectures by the Palestinian writer Raja Shehadeh in New York and London.
Repertoire and performances
The new orchestra quickly found worldwide support and approval. After three concerts in Weimar and two in Chicago (from 1999 to 2001), the ensemble quickly and sustainably established itself in Spanish musical life from 2002. The ensemble played five concerts in Madrid's Plaza Mayor (between 2006 and 2011) and performed in Algeciras , Cádiz , Córdoba , Granada , Huelva , Jaén , Málaga , Ronda , San Sebastián , Saragossa and Seville . In 2004 WEDO made its first guest appearance at the Barbican Center in London , and in 2005 for the first time at the Proms in the Royal Albert Hall and is regularly invited again. In 2006 the ensemble made its debut at Carnegie Hall in New York , and in 2013 it played all nine Beethoven symphonies in four concerts . Piotr Beczała , Diana Damrau , Kate Lindsey , René Pape and the Westminster Symphonic Choir sang in the ninth , rehearsed by Joe Miller .
A close collaboration has existed since 2007 with the Lucerne Festival and the Salzburg Festival, and since 2008 with the Berlin Waldbühne , which can seat 22,000 people. The ensemble has a particularly close relationship with Salzburg, where it can be heard in several concerts almost every year. In 2007 Barenboim gave additional master classes with his musicians under the title Schule des Hörens , in 2009 they played Beethoven's Fidelio twice in concerts in the Great Festival Hall and once in 2013 at the Whitsun Festival Brahms' German Requiem . With Mozart's Figaro overture, the new works by Adler and Roustom and four Ravel pieces, the orchestra and conductor received standing ovations and rave reviews in August 2014 .
The orchestra's first tour of South America in 2010 took the orchestra to ten concerts in the Dominican Republic , Venezuela , Ecuador , Colombia and Argentina , where it performed in the famous Teatro Colón in Buenos Aires , among others . In 2014 Barenboim, who was born in Buenos Aires, returned to his hometown with his ensemble and gave a series of eight concerts there. In the opening concert Martha Argerich played Beethoven's 1st piano concerto , after the break four works by Maurice Ravel were performed in quick succession , first the Rapsodie espagnole , and finally the Boléro . Four concerts with a luxurious line-up were dedicated to excerpts from Wagner's Tristan und Isolde ; Ekaterina Gubanova (Brangäne), Waltraud Meier (Isolde), René Pape (König Marke) and Peter Seiffert (Tristan) sang .
WEDO has also performed in classical concert halls such as the Wiener Musikverein , the Salle Pleyel in Paris , the Palais des Beaux-Arts de Bruxelles and the Moscow Tchaikovsky Conservatory , as well as in important opera houses such as La Scala in Milan , the Théâtre du Châtelet in Paris and of the Berlin State Opera Unter den Linden .
Honors
- 2007 Praemium Imperiale Grant for Young Artists
- 2010 International Peace Prize of Westphalia , Youth Prize
- 2020 Rheingau Music Prize together with Daniel Barenboim
Movies
- Paul Smaczny : Knowledge is the Beginning (Eng. ... we can only reduce hatred ), documentary 2006 (awarded, inter alia, with the International Emmy Award 2006 for "Best Arts Programming")
Books
- Daniel Barenboim and Edward W. Said: Parallels and Paradoxes. About music and society . Berlin 2004.
- Elena Cheah: The power of music. The West-Eastern Divan Orchestra. With a foreword by Daniel Barenboim. Edition Elke Heidenreich at C. Bertelsmann. Munich 2009. The original edition was published by: Giangiacomo Feltrinelli Editore, Milano 2009.
Web links
- Orchestra website
- Barenboim biography (English)
Individual evidence
- ↑ Reinhard Schau: The Belvedere Castle Music High School in Weimar: Past and present. 2010, Böhlau Verlag, ISBN 978-3412205560 , p. 255
- ↑ Georg Diez: A very German matter. In: Der Spiegel , 40/2017, p. 120
- ↑ a b Kölner Stadt-Anzeiger, August 24, 2011
- ↑ Article in the Tagesschau , August 15, 2011, 8 p.m.