A REMINDER OF DANIEL BARNBOIM A MUSICAL MORON
Another “wunderkind” of the Classical world who made a splash recently is Daniel Baremboim, the Israeli pianist and conductor, when he was granted “Palestinian” (read: Arab) citizenship at the end of a piano recital in Ramallah, for his work in promoting cultural exchange between young people in Israel and the Arab world.
“Under the most difficult circumstances he has shown solidarity with the Palestinian people,” said Mustafa Barghouti, a Palestinian MP and former leader of Arafat’s terrorist organization Al Fatah.
Baremboim was a great friend of the late Edward Said, with whom he founded an orchestra meant to bring Israeli and Arab musicians together called the East-West Divan workshop. However, in his lectures he went far beyond bringing harmony with increasingly harsh criticism of Israel while ignoring Arab provocation and terrorism.
In the first Edward Said lecture at Columbia University, delivered in 2005, two years after Said’s death, Baremboim stated that the failure of the Israeli government to accept the Palestinians’ “narration” led to anti-Semitism, and that suicide bombings in Israel had “to be seen in the context of the historical development at which we have arrived.”
In the fall of 2006, Baremboim gave a six part lecture series at Harvard University’s under the aegis of the Charles Eliot Norton Petry Center. His lectures focused on music as a catalyst for political change. Too bad the Nazis, who listened to Brahms and Beethoven, had not heard Baremboim describe how music can be a model for human collaboration. And, for good measure, he continued his scolding of Israel.
In April of 2006 in one of the Six Reith lectures on music sponsored by the BBC, he answered a question of being sour on Israel: “I have more and more the feeling that after the war in 1967 this country went drunk, but the hangover is still felt today. Unless we are in a position that we can examine this, in my view there is no way that you will be able to recapture your love affair with this country, because your love affair with this country is precisely what draws you now to Ramallah. This is one of the reasons why I feel it is not my duty but it is my privilege to bring whatever I can to the Palestinian people.” And, surprise, surprise….while rockets from Gaza continued to rain on Israel, Baremboim refused to give an unqualified condemnation of Arab terrorism.
While Baremboim is not reticent to take bread with terrorists whose averred and repeated aim in life is to destroy Israel, he gets extremely upset when anti-Semitism is directed against him. In 2000 a furor erupted in Germany when he was compared to a native conductor. Klaus Landowsky, a leading Berlin politician from the Christian Democratic party said: ”On the one hand, you have the young von Karajan in Thielemann, on the other you have the Jew Barenboim.”
Within hours Mr. Barenboim asserted his ”astonishment” to discover that ”my Jewishness could have anything to do with my position at the Staatsoper or with my music.” He added that it frightened him and: ”I find this sort of anti-Semitism so incredible, I do not want to believe it.”
Earth to Baremboim: Hey! Was this the fault of Israel’s “occupation” and in your solipsism did you not know anything of the alarming growth of anti-Semitism throughout Europe?
Maazel and Baremboim are not the first political cretins in the world of symphonic music.
One is of course reminded of Leonard Bernstein in January 1970, who, in the words of the late William Buckley:
“… threw a big cocktail party for the Black Panthers in New York. The Panthers, you will recall, were a group of revolutionaries whose planted axiom was that the United States was racist and unjust, and had to be destroyed. Their leader rejoiced over the assassination of Robert Kennedy, featuring a picture of him lying in a pool of his own blood, his face transformed to the likeness of a pig. At Mr. Bernstein’s luxurious apartment, his guests were lectured by Black Panther Donald Cox, who began by announcing that if business didn’t provide full employment, then the Panthers would simply take over the means of production and put them in the hands of the people, to which prescription Mr. Bernstein’s reply was, “I dig it absolutely.”
What is next in the careers of these “wunderjerks?” A concert in Teheran? Chamber music in the caves of the Taliban? A sonata for Osama bin Laden?
William Congreve wrote in 1697 in “The Mourning Bride”: “Musick has Charms to sooth a savage Breast.” Don’t believe it. The gun is far mightier than the baton.
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