Arts & International Affairs: Vol. 3, No. 2, Summer/Autumn 2018 | Page 60

THE BARENBOIM CASE: HOW TO LINK MUSIC AND DIPLOMACY STUDIES
binding these young people together is ambition: the Divan provides an exceptional opportunity
to gain experience under Daniel Barenboim, a famous and influential conductor,
and hence is a stepping-stone to professional advancement. In itself, of course, there
is nothing reprehensible about this�but it is a far cry from stylising the orchestra as an
exemplary space of reconciliation and understanding” (Deane 2009), the levels of individual
involvement may have varied considerably. Retrospectively, several participants
had to admit they were “not aware or interested enough” (Cheah 2009:14) to actively
engage in the variety of political debates, guest lectures, or film projections which Barenboim
organized in collaboration with Edward W. Said (later his widow Mariam) as a
complement to the rehearsals. Overall, however, it seems to be a banal rule of thumb that
the more often the participation, the stronger the transformative effect for the individual
musician.
A few words need to be said on the turnover rate�a concise quantitative analysis of individual
socio-professional biographies of WEDO participants remaining desideratum
for further research. In general, the institution reached a balanced tableau of natural
fluctuation with new entrants and “graduates” on the one hand, including a stable core
group of senior musicians on the other; Barenboim recently estimated that around 1000
participants have passed through the orchestra since 1999 (ZDF Mittagsmagazin 2018).
Many of these “veterans” are pursuing professional careers in both Western and Middle
Eastern symphony orchestras (Cheah 2009:229); however, it would be necessary to reassess
the older empirical findings by Solveig Riiser and reexamine how substantial the
Eurocentric brain-drain through scholarships and a veritable Divan diaspora in Berlin
is today (Riiser 2010:32f.). There are examples of outstanding engagement to advocate
Barenboim’s vision in follow-up projects such as the violinist Nabeel Abboud-Ashkarin,
founder of the Barenboim–Said Conservatory in Nazareth (later renamed into Polyphony
Conservatory), an institution facing the geographical and mental separation of local
Arab and Jewish communities (Cheah 2009:40–47; Jaggi 2014). For others, societal and
political obstacles seem too high to consider any form of long-term engagement in their
countries of origin. Such are the reflections by the Lebanese cellist Nassib Al Ahmadieh,
a permanent resident of the Divan since 2000 and today member of the Staatskapelle
Weimar, who instead shifted his focus on pedagogical work in the East-German provincial
city of Finsterwalde, where he is teaching at the local music school and initiated a
festival for chamber music:
All we Divaners can do is to present an example in our own countries.
Maybe I can soften the fear and hate, maybe I can help to put these emotions
in a rational perspective [ ... ]. For me, the obligation to participate
in the development of the Lebanese society is always in my mind, but
the society there is so restricted. If I want to teach music in southern
Lebanon, thy might see it as a Druze initiative from a political leader
who wants to diminish the influence of another political leader, and so
on and so forth. (Cheah 2009:109)
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