Daniel Barenboim does not believe in hope any more.
Hope, the Jewish conductor says, is a luxury he can no longer afford. Perhaps the hope he had in his youth died with his first wife, the cellist Jacqueline du Pré. Or perhaps it faded when his soulmate, the Palestinian writer and activist Edward Said, died in 2003.
Barenboim leans forward in his chair and puts one of his
oddly small, smooth pianist hands on my thigh. "You know, when I was younger I
was more concerned with hope, " he says, in his heavily accented English. "Now
I think it's a waste of time and a waste of energy
and emotion. You have to do what you can do. And then, if
there's hope? Well, good. But hope is not something you can aspire to. It's
something you have to create. You have to do something practical."
He declares this, his watery grey eyes fixed and unblinking in the fierce Spanish afternoon, then taps his thick cigar into a silver ashtray and turns to look out over the courtyard. We are sitting in the bar of the Parador Hotel, part of the Palace of Alhambra in Granada. Tonight Barenboim will conduct a concert by the Staatskapelle Orchestra of Berlin, the city in which he lives; right now he is tired after a lengthy rehearsal. The 62-year-old likes to sleep every afternoon, but he has no time to doze today. He has too much on his mind. His wife's mother has been taken ill, and as he talks he repeatedly glances at his mobile phone, waiting for another call or text.
We have met on this feverishly hot day to talk of peace and reconciliation — the aims of his orchestra, the West-Eastern Divan, which he is bringing to the Edinburgh Festival. It is made up of Israeli and Arab youths, and represents détente, co-operation — even that hope of which he is now so suspicious. Earlier, he blew into the bar, a short, loud flurry of white suit, cigar smoke and beaming smiles, loudly proclaiming: "Ah, the Scottish are here!" He threw his panama hat onto the floor, and dropped a plastic bag full of fresh fruit beside it. Now, as he sits with a glass of cold orange and grapefruit juice, he is quieter, but still strident and firm in his language. Under his crinkled white Paul Smith suit he wears a white shirt with a green print of leaves and plants; he also sports a pair of natty white leather shoes. He has an olive-smooth face and large eyes; a small brown head topped with tufts of white hair.
The West-Eastern Divan was established in 1999 as the product of Barenboim's deep friendship with Said. It takes its name from a cycle of poems by the 19th-century German poet Goethe which were inspired by — and modelled on — Persian verse forms. A fusion of idealism and music, it brings together young musicians from Israel, Palestine, Syria, Lebanon, Jordan and Egypt to create one harmonious whole. After Edinburgh, Barenboim will take it to perform in Ramallah, the West Bank town besieged by Israeli forces in 2002, for another public performance.
Although he refuses to believe in hope, his belief in the power of music to transcend the limitations of humanity is unconquerable.
"There is so much lack of understanding in the world, " he says. "The future of the two peoples, Israelis and Palestinians, is connected, and it is a symmetrical problem: they do not understand each other's narrative. They have to know the future is living side by side. There is no way the Israelis can make the Palestinians disappear; nor can the Palestinians make Israel go away."
Music is the centre of Barenboim's life: as strong as his friendship with Said; as strong as his now infamous marriage to du Pré, the formidable British cellist, who died in 1987.
He was born in Buenos Aires, the only child of Jewish parents: Enrique, a pianist and music professor, and Aida, also a pianist. It was clear from an early age that the young Daniel was a prodigy. He began lessons with his parents at the age of five, and gave his first public concert at the age of seven. Fame and fortune followed, but only after a potentially traumatic move to Tel Aviv in 1952, when the Barenboims looked to Israel, then a state in its infancy, for a new life.
Although he had to learn a new alphabet, a new language and a new culture, his childhood was blissful. Israel was young and confident, and his family's new home was peaceful. There was no sign of the antagonism that would later scar the country and define his current life.
"I was not totally wrapped up in the music, " he assures me. "My parents were very intelligent. They saw to it that I grew up as a normal child. The move was not traumatic — of course I was playing concerts, but I went to school like everyone else. My parents explained that the Jewish people, wherever they had lived across the world, had been a minority, but they wanted me to grow up like everyone else, as part of a majority. So we were not moving to Israel for economic or political reasons, but for ideological reasons. I grew up in a harmonious way — but of course the existence of the non-Jewish population of the former Palestine was practically ignored."
His parents, he says, never talked about the Arabs. They might as well not have existed at all. Even Said, his closest friend, once said of Barenboim: "I think when he was growing up he never met a Palestinian. They may as well have been on the moon." No Arabs lived in Tel Aviv, the conductor says. "It was talked about in this way: that there was Palestine before the state of Israel was created, and then the Palestinians left. But it was not the true picture, or at least not the complete picture."
Unlike some of the players in his orchestra, Barenboim was brought up without the constant fear of attack and reprisal. His parents taught him not to hate, not to dismiss whole populations because of the actions of their most deranged members. "We despised the Nazis, obviously, what they did and what they stood for, but not Germany and German culture. Of course not. I was playing Haydn, Brahms and Beethoven: how could I?"
Life for the young performer was a whirl of concerts, orchestras, acclaim and adulation, and the exhausting travelling life of the musician. Professionally he moved from working primarily as a pianist to become a conductor, an orchestra director and an international star.
He met du Pré in 1966 and married her the following year: the duo
became a glamorous focus for classical music across the world, a
golden couple combining beauty and artistry.
But slowly his focus was moving away from the world of the lectern and the score, to the events convulsing Israel.
He admits he was "in anguish" in 1967 when, during the Six Day War, he thought the combined aggressive might of Egypt, Jordan and Syria would crush his adopted homeland.
Instead he found himself looking on with increasing discomfort as Israel won the war, and took control of the Gaza Strip, the Sinai Peninsula, the West Bank, the Golan Heights and whole populations of people who lived there. "In 1970, Golda Meir [the then Israeli prime minister] pronounced that there was no such thing as a Palestinian people. I thought then: you can't say this. You can't turn a blind eye, say they don't exist."
As he speaks about politics, he gesticulates wildly. It's as if he is now on the lectern, in front of his orchestra, rather than sitting in a quiet hotel bar in the stifling Spanish heat.
"After the Six Day War there was a sort of euphoria, but that euphoria could not last because it was based on the non-acceptance of the rationality of the Palestinian story. It's imperative to me that everybody accepts the rationality of their narrative: namely, that the region lived for 500 years under the Turks, 30 years under the British, and then when the British left, they left one part of that population to create a new identity for itself, as Israel. But what about the others: the many Palestinians in Jaffa and Haifa and Gaza? It is a fact that has to be dealt with."
Barenboim has never been afraid to speak out. Last year he even lambasted the Israeli government when he accepted the prestigious Wolf Prize for the Arts in the Knesset, the Israeli parliament. "Unless the Israelis understand the Palestinian narrative, it will never be solved, " he says. "That's not a even a political statement, it's a historical statement. You have to accept that the establishment of Israel was a catastrophe for them; that this is not a wilful anti-Semitic declaration, but an expression of the facts. Many of their lives were shattered. You cannot go back in time, obviously, but you have to accept that."
Perhaps he is too much of an idealist. When he talks of the West-Eastern Divan, he rigidly repeats that it is not a political organisation — even though bringing together Jews and Arabs in the Middle East is by its very nature a political act.
"It is a human project, " he maintains. "I don't think human beings can necessarily change or take away the suffering of somebody else, but we have to make the effort to try and understand and limit the suffering of the other, if it is in our power to do so. Music's greatest strength is that it can integrate everything in the human experience: so therefore when you take two people who are antagonistic, but they are able to make music together, they transcend the limitations of suffering and of joy."
He has attracted much criticism for his stance. His condemnatory speech at the Knesset, and his unapologetic performances of Wagner — a composer widely seen as anti-Semitic — have caused division and discord. "I cannot change the perceptions of others, " he says. "But this conflict in Israel is not only a political conflict: it is a conflict of history and a conflict of social justice. And my faith in music has never been shaken. This is why Edward Said and I created this orchestra: not to make a political statement, but to create the conditions for people to come from all backgrounds and make music together."
Edward Said changed Daniel Barenboim's life. Their friendship became one of his most significant relationships, alongside his two marriages — first to du Pré, now to Elena Bashkirova, the Russian pianist, with whom he has two sons. Said made him think about the plight of the Palestinians more deeply, and inspired him to create something practical to confront the divisions in their homeland.
Until Said is mentioned, the maestro has been on a roll,
talking loudly and confidently, smiling at passers-by and hotel guests as they
salute and wave. Now, however, he grows quiet. Although a charming man,
theatrical and emotional, he has an effective technique for not answering
questions he does not like: he just says "no", shakes his head a little, and looks out of the nearest window
until another question is forthcoming. It is unnerving, especially after
his former candour. All that can be heard after I mention
Said's name is the fountain dribbling outside. Ash falls
from his cigar and it sounds like an avalanche.
But this silence — unlike the one that falls when I later mention du Pré — does not signal reluctance to talk about Said. It is because he is close to tears. At last he talks, his voice low and his eyes filling. He speaks of his friend with love and tenderness.
He met Said by chance in a London hotel in 1991. They should have been diametrically opposed — the Palestinian activist and the Israeli hero; the introverted academic and the outgoing showman. But they bonded immediately. They realised they both wanted the same for their homeland: understanding, a dialogue, the acceptance that the future could not be defined by conflict and ignorance. Their friendship stimulated both men: Said took up his already accomplished piano-playing with new relish, while Barenboim began to think of practical steps to bridge the divides in their country. The Divan was born.
"He really was my closest friend, " Barenboim says, slightly choked. "He was a very, very exceptional human being. He had great capacity to understand and to feel, not only for his people but for himself and others too. For example, he was one of the best agitators for the need of the Arabs to understand the Holocaust, to accept that part of history — and for the Israelis to accept the suffering of the Palestinians. He was a remarkable man. When I met him, he provided me with an intellectual stimulus that I had never had before."
He recalls meeting the man who "set fires in his brain" as follows: "I was checking into a hotel in London. He approached me because he recognised me. I knew who he was; I had read about him, but I didn't know how he looked. He approached me and he was fascinating. And after that we were inseparable."
Said died two years ago, after a long battle with cancer. But the West-Eastern Divan is the vision he shared with his friend — the vision of a united Jewish and Palestinian state — expressed in a single musical entity. The orchestra was the fruit of their friendship, and Barenboim carries Said's spirit every time the orchestra steps onto a stage.
The Divan took two years to establish, and brings together talented young musicians between the ages of 14 and 25. "The orchestra is really a mirror of society, " Barenboim says.
"You have people who are serious, you have people who don't care, people who are intelligent, people who are less intelligent, you have all that in there. You have people who want to meet people and resolve their differences; then there are others who come who just want to play music. It's incredible that people who have grown up in that society come together that way. I can say that the orchestra has changed people's lives."
It is far better, he says, spreading his hands wide, to have people coming together to play music than "sitting in Tel Aviv or Damascus, worrying about who is going to attack you".
The Divan will play in Ramallah on August 21. It could be a hostile audience, I suggest. He shrugs it off. "I just don't think about it, " he says. "I am not nervous. When you go on stage at the age of seven, you are used to such situations. I don't get nervous now. But it's not a question of being thick-skinned; it's a question of whether, like me, you have achieved a certain notoriety and have a certain independence of opinion. With notoriety, you can do what you think is right."
As keen as Barenboim is to speak about the Divan, his
enthusiasm visibly withers when talk turns to du Pré. The problem is not their long marriage — or her incredible talent — but the controversy surrounding her final years, and in particular the fallout from the 1998 film
Hilary and Jackie. It garnered an Oscar nomination for Emily Watson, who played du Pré, but has scarred Barenboim. Its dissection of the relationship between the cellist, Barenboim, Jacqueline's sister Hilary and her husband Kiffer Finzi has left a residue of anger within him. Based on the book A Genius in the Family (which Hilary co-wrote with her brother, Piers) it depicts
Jacqueline asking Hilary for an affair with Finzi. Hilary agrees,
out of love for her sister.
Du Pré, who had severe multiple sclerosis, died — with Barenboim beside her — at the age of 42. It was a tragedy not only for her and her family, but for music. During her final years, Barenboim, while caring for du Pré, set up home with his current wife in Paris. He has been evasive in the past over whether du Pré knew of these arrangements, and today is not in the mood to elaborate.
I suggest that, to many in Britain, Barenboim is better known for being associated with du Pré than as an artist in his own right.
He raises his voice: "I still associate myself with her. She was an extraordinary human being, a unique human being, a unique talent." The film, though, is not up for discussion. "I don't want to talk about the film. I found it abhorrent, " he says with a unexpected growl. You imagine he can put the fear of God into unhelpful musicians. He looks away. "I don't want to talk about that film, " he says again, unprompted. "But I don't mind talking about her, of course not. No." And then he falls quiet for quite some time, and looks out into the courtyard again.
Later, as the waitress presents the bill with a beaming Andalusian smile, Barenboim mentions that he has fond memories of Edinburgh — where he attended nearly every festival in the 1970s — and of Scotland in general.
In particular, he remembers holidays there with du Pré, among them two typically wild and windy adventures in the Western Isles.
"We went on a couple of holidays to Mull, " he says, smiling and looking into the ice melting in his glass. "It was very rough on the sea, very wild. We tried to get to Fingal's Cave on the island of Staffa. I remember there was a boatman called Mr. Wilson, from Mull, but it was so rough he told Jackie and I that we had to turn back. Another time we finally got there, and it was beautiful."
Barenboim has riches in his life — wealth,
talent, fame, a degree of power — but he has also lost much. The pain
of losing du Pré is still there; perhaps fresher and more livid is the pain of losing Said, the man who helped transform
his thinking, his life. As we leave the hotel lobby, he looks tired but relieved the
interview is over. I ask him whether he keeps up the same
pace as he did when he was young. "Younger, not young: I
am young still!" he shouts delightedly and slaps my thigh boisterously. Then
he asks me what I am doing that night, and produces a ticket for his concert,
part of Granada's annual music festival, from his wallet.
In concert, he is a white storm on the lectern. Beneath the open sky of the Alhambra auditorium, he conducts an almost feverish performance of Mahler's 7th Symphony. With melodramatic moves, he implores the strings; he bends down almost to his knees to signal to the brass; he shakes his whole body at the cellos; he nods and smiles at the wind section.
At the end of the piece, he looks shattered, seemingly oblivious to the many "bravos" ringing from the well-dressed, capacity audience.
He wipes his brow and thanks his orchestra with a nod. And as the applause rises, he looks to the stars for some time, as if searching for more light from the darkened midnight sky.
The West-Eastern Divan performs at
the Usher Hall as part of the Edinburgh International Festival on August 15.
