Daniel Barenboim opens the first West-Eastern Divan Festival in Berlin

The orchestra Barenboim co-founded with Edward Said will give two concerts at the Philharmonie, the second with pianist Lang Lang. The inaugural festival runs from November 11 to 18 and closes with music by Pierre Boulez and Mark Simpson at Berghain.

Daniel Barenboim will conduct the West-Eastern Divan Orchestra at the Philharmonie Berlin on Wednesday, November 11, to open the first West-Eastern Divan Festival. Presented by the Daniel Barenboim Stiftung, the festival comprises 11 events, bringing together the orchestra, musicians and students from its partner institutions, and guest artists.

The opening concert begins at 8 p.m. Berlin time with Beethoven’s Leonore Overture No. 3, followed by the Prelude and Liebestod from Wagner’s Tristan und Isolde. Schubert’s “Great” C major Symphony, D 944, completes the programme. Barenboim and the orchestra return to the Philharmonie on November 17, when Lang Lang plays Mendelssohn’s Piano Concerto No. 1 in G minor. That concert also includes Wagner’s Siegfried Idyll and Schumann’s “Rhenish” Symphony.

From a workshop in Weimar to a festival in Berlin

The festival traces its origins to a workshop that Barenboim and Palestinian-American literary scholar Edward W. Said organised in Weimar in 1999. They brought young Israeli and Palestinian musicians together to rehearse and perform, laying the foundations for an orchestra conceived as a forum for dialogue through music. The Berlin festival brings together the institutions that grew out of that initiative, including the Barenboim-Said Akademie and Pierre Boulez Saal in Berlin, the Fundación Barenboim-Said in Seville and the Barenboim-Said Center for Music in Ramallah. Students from Berlin, Seville and Ramallah will take part.

From the oud to live electronics

At the Pierre Boulez Saal on November 12, Iraqi oud player Naseer Shamma and his ensemble will perform traditional and new works. On November 14, Nabil Shehata will conduct the Orchestra of the Barenboim-Said Akademie in Beethoven’s Triple Concerto and Mendelssohn’s “Scottish” Symphony. The following evening, the West-Eastern Divan Ensemble, founded by the orchestra’s concertmaster Michael Barenboim, will play chamber music by Mendelssohn, Prokofiev, Ligeti and Jörg Widmann.

The final concert, on November 18, takes the festival to Berlin’s techno club Berghain. Violinist Bilal Alnemr, clarinettist Martin Adámek and horn player Ben Goldscheider will perform Boulez’s Anthèmes 2 and Dialogue de l’ombre double alongside Simpson’s Darkness Moves II, in a programme combining solo instruments with live or recorded electronics.

Full programme here