Arts & International Affairs: Vol. 3, No. 2, Summer/Autumn 2018 | Page 53

ARTS & INTERNATIONAL AFFAIRS
dressed: how are researchers enabled to assess any long-term impact as well as the question
of quantifiability of such initiatives (beyond attendance figures, the number of participants
or utilization rates as indicators of extremely limited validity when political and
mental change are investigated); and how to verify the authenticity of a given initiative,
all the more since event-based and only punctual actions rather than consolidated strategies
dominates (the most prominent examples of such rather short-term investments
being the semi-official U.S. mission the New York Philharmonic performed in Pyongyang
2008 (Wakin 2008) or the role of Russian “state artists” during the intervention
in Palmyra 2016, where the appropriation and enactment of military victory took place
through a presumed liberation from terrorism and has been symbolically expressed with
a performance of the Mariinsky Theatre Orchestra (Schoenbaum 2016)?
As previous research in cultural diplomacy has already considered from a best-practice
viewpoint, distance from political and economic agendas (that is to say sufficient integrity
in public opinion) together with a high level of interaction with the target audience and
long-term commitment independent from ad hoc crisis management seem more likely to
be successful (Gienow-Hecht 2010; Goff 2013). Against this background, the orchestra’s
extraordinary and long-lasting success can also be attributed to two decisive structural
developments: a general evolution toward professionalization (not alone thanks to
the standardization of audition procedures from 2003 onwards) and institutionalization.
Nearly two decades after the launch of the WEDO as a one-time workshop in 1999,
Barenboim drew a positive summary in relation to his and Edward Said’s initial goals:
“At the very beginning, more than 60 percent of its musicians had never played in an
orchestra. Today, it is recognized as one of the leading orchestras in the world. Musically,
it’s much better than we've ever dreamed of ” (Bourdais 2018). Barenboim himself dated
the audible result of this first artistic development boost to 2007, when the Divan musicians
were able to perform Arnold Schönberg’s tremendously demanding Variationen
opus 31 (the first 12-tone work Schönberg composed for larger ensemble) after 22 rehearsals
in Salzburg and eventually got highest appraisal by Pierre Boulez. In addition,
the WEDO differs from every other conventional youth orchestra not only in its specific
humanistic claim and the related political implications to encourage the participation
of people from nations that are intertwined by mutual enmity, but also with regard to
its organizational concept itself. Since the very first workshop in 1999, Axel Wilczok
(concertmaster of the Staatskapelle Berlin from 1984 until his early death in 2018 and
professor at the Rostock Musikhochschule), Matthias Glander (principal clarinettist of
the same orchestra), and the conductor Tabaré Perlas (Barenboim’s project assistant in
Weimar 1999, CEO of the Daniel Barenboim Stiftung since 2008) supported Barenboim
by realizing separate rehearsals for the string and wind sections as well as by conducting
the demanding in-site auditions for new musicians (see Cheah 2009:51–65). That
said, the institutional consolidation was strongly driven by pioneer spirit and personal
commitment; study grants and long-term tutorship, often unpaid and mostly performed
by members of the Staatskapelle Berlin, the Berlin Philharmonic, or the Chicago Sym-
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