A violinist is seen during warm up at the Barenboim-Said Academy in Berlin. (Photo by Odd ANDERSEN / AFP)
More than 25 years since its founding by star conductor Daniel Barenboim, the West-Eastern Divan Orchestra's mission to foster dialogue in the Middle East endures -- including among its own members.
Our message of peace must be louder than ever," Barenboim, who formed the ensemble alongside US-Palestinian intellectual Edward Said in 1999, told AFP ahead of a week-long festival celebrating the organisation in Berlin.
The event aims to share the orchestra's work with an "even larger audience," said the 83-year-old, an Argentine-Israeli citizen who was granted Palestinian nationality in 2008, via email.
The West-Eastern Divan Orchestra has long brought together around 100 musicians from Israel, the Palestinian Territories and Arab states, seeking to promote understanding through a shared love of classical music.
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Given their different backgrounds and political views, relations between the members are complex, all the more so since the Hamas-led October 7, 2023 attacks on Israel and the subsequent war in Gaza.
Initial conversations between the musicians were at times "heavy" and "inflammatory," Israeli violist Tal Riva Theodorou told AFP.
"Spending time together and understanding and trying to listen to each other, we have come closer," said the 44-year-old, a member of the orchestra since 2004.
Close proximity on the orchestra's intense tours through Europe has also driven dialogue between the musicians, said Palestinian double bassist Fadwa Qamhia.
"You're not often expecting to pass a whole afternoon on a bus ride with the opposite side," said the 31-year-old from the occupied West Bank.
But then, she said, "you can talk, you can share, you practice your humanity by talking".
Above all, playing with each other and creating something together opens "common ground", said Theodorou, who grew up in the Israeli coastal city of Ashkelon, just north of Gaza.
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Born in the West Bank city of Nablus in 1995, shortly after the Oslo Accords, Qamhia had a childhood marked by occupation and military checkpoints.
Joining the Divan has granted her a "different kind of power," she explained, "the power of being human".
"Nobody can stop me at a checkpoint here, nobody can tell me to go home, nobody can shoot at me. This doesn't happen here. So for me, this is an exercise in humanity, this is an exercise of freedom, and I want this for my people."
The musicians are united by a common admiration and respect for Barenboim, 83, who confirmed his Parkison's disease diagnosis last year.
"He feels a lot of pain for us because we are almost like his sons and daughters," said Qamhia.
"And he has kind of this parental relationship, at least to some of us. I think he feels pain that the situation has not gotten any better."
Ahead of the festival, a frail Barenboim attended a rehearsal in the German capital, where he served as general music director of the Berlin State Opera for several decades.
"The greatest danger is that all the people who so fervently long for peace are drowned out by extremists and violence," wrote Barenboim.
"I am profoundly convinced that the Israeli and Palestinian peoples share a common destiny."
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