Walküre with Daniel Barenboim and the West-Eastern Divan Ochestra at the Berlin Waldbühne

Waltraud Meier and René Pape with the West-Eastern Divan orchestra (rehearsal at the Berlin Waldbühne)

Daniel Barenboim with the West-Eastern Divan Orchestra. Waldbühne, Berlin. August 23th 2008. Instrumental soloists: Yael Kareth, Karim Said and Daniel Barenboim. Walküre soloists: Waltraud Meier (Sieglinde), René Pape (Hunding), Simon O´Neill (Siegmund).
Programme: Mozart, concert for three pianos. Walküre, Act 1.

As a follow up on my previous post on Daniel Barenboim´s ill-fated concert in Copenhagen earlier this week, I´ll temporarily skip the chronology of my Salzburg Festival postings and report briefly from yesterday evenings concert with Daniel Barenboim and the West-Eastern Divan Orchestra in Berlin.

Daniel Barenboim looked completely his usual self during this concert, in which he presented the odd coupling of Mozart´s Concert for three pianos (an opportunity to show off some talented younger pianists, I suppose, and of which I don´t have anywhing further to say) and Walküre, Act 1 (of which I have considerably more to say).

Though I genuinely admire Daniel Barenboim for his efforts with this orchesta as well as in Middle-Eastern politics, for which I hope he eventually will be rewarded the Nobel Peace Prize, he has been walking a dangerous line with the West-Easter Divan Orchestra all summer, several times on the verge of sentimentalism, something rather unusual for him.
And the idea of playing Wagner at Hitler´s Waldbühne with a mixed Arab-Israeli orchestra strikes me of something along those lines at well. At least he didn´t make any speech here, no offence intended (or if he did, we left beforehand).

On the Walküre:

The West-Eastern Divan Orchestra plays more and more like a professional symphony orchestra. That said, it was obvious, they didn´t have much experience with Wagner, especially in the string section, which is heavily emphasized in Barenboim´s interpretation as usual.

Simon O´Neill is a rather fine Siegmund, he definitely has both the voice and the notes, but for him to be a great Siegmund he needs to work on his stage appearance. Furthermore he had absolutely no stage chemistry with Waltraud Meier (not necessarily his fault).

Waltraud Meier was in excellent voice as Sieglinde and my only real complaint about her is that she seemed to wear the same unflattering dress she also wore at the Barcelona Walküre previously this season.

And lastly, a piece of entirely unsolicited advice for René Pape: Since he repeatedly complains of being unjustly compared to the German Black Basses (I do agree with him), perhaps he shouldn´t be singing Gottlob Frick´s signature role? Hunding being virtually the only role apart from Hagen where you with some right could ask for the black sound, which he simply does not have. Furthermore, black sound or not, the part is too low for him. At least he didn´t seem to have wasted his time practicing it. That said, he was in absolutely glorious voice in what was hopefully his last Hunding in Berlin.

West-Eastern Divan Orchestra with Boulez/Barenboim in Salzburg

Founded in 1999 by Daniel Barenboim (Argentinian-Israeli I believe) and the late Palestinian intellectual Edward Said, the West-Eastern Divan Orchestra consists of young musicians (under 25) from Israel, Palestine, Lebanon, Syria, Jordan and Egypt and is “an orchestra agains ignorance” according to Barenboim.

This year, the West-Eastern Divan Orchestra has been invited by the Salzburg Festival as Orchestra in residence – and scheduled for concerts in the Salzburg Festival Hall as well as afternoon sessions in the newly renovated university aula just opposite the Festival Hall. I attended two excellent afternoon sessions lasting roughly from 3 to 6 pm for the bargain price of 10 Euros.
The sessions were designed to discuss several aspects of the music, with demonstrations by the orchestra and questions from both audience and orchestra members (luckily for me, in English).

I believe, the theme of the first afternoon (with Barenboim) was “sound and silence” and that of the second afternoon “structure” (with Pierre Boulez).
The first afternoon started with the orchestra played excerpts from Schönberg`s Variationen für Orchester op. 31 and the Tristan chord and the rest of the afternoon was a sort of master class with Daniel Barenboim and the young British conductor Robin Ticciati, who conducted the Leonore Overture (no. 3). The dialogue between the two conductors was excellent, Barenboim came across as very open-minded, and kept telling Ticciati he was conducting the overture with excessive dynamics in the strings (funnily the very same thing Barenboim himself is often criticized of doing - not by me however). Orchestra members had suggestions as well and the whole thing was very entertaining.

The second afternoon “structure” was with Pierre Boulez (one of my favourite conductors) and gave great insight into his way of working with an orchestra. It was also the first time another than Barenboim conducted the orchestra. Boulez conducted Bartok´s Four Orchestra Pieces – first excerpts from each of piece demonstrating how to structure the music and then the four pieces uninterrupted. And it was clearly demonstrated, that although this orchestras claim to fame is the mixed middle-eastern background, it is an astonishingly good orchestra! The way they played those Bartok pieces was just excellent – and this is not easy music to communicate. Audience members trying to show off their knowledge of modern music, certain performances etc. rather than curiosity regarding the questions they were asking unfortunately dominated the questions session. Not too surprisingly, Pierre Boulez at one point stated, that he preferred an acid response to no response at all (when asked about audience reactions to modern music). And that a high quality performance is tremendously important in atonal music, where the communication of structure is mandatory for understanding the pieces. And that performances in the 1940´s and 1050´s of Bartok frequently were awful, because neither conductor nor orchestra got the notes right, not to talk about the structure in the music.
In short, two excellent afternoons with an excellent orchestra. I don´t think the members are professional musicians (yet), but they played like they were. Indeed, a very good initiative.