The idea of uniting young musicians from Israel, Palestine and various Arab countries still seems incredible today. Yet the West-Eastern Divan Orchestra has been flourishing since 1999, when it was founded by Daniel Barenboim and Edward Said. In 2007 the ensemble took a highly acclaimed residency at the Salzburg Festival. The major orchestral concert comprises a Beethoven overture, an intricate and multilayered piece by Schoenberg, and Tchaikovsky’s Sixth Symphony, the Pathétique, in which Barenboim pulls out all the stops and coaxes rarely heard instrumental lines and accents from his musicians.
Boulez conducts Schoenberg, Stravinsky & De Falla – Triple Bill
In the second half of his long and extraordinary career Pierre Boulez emerged as one of the most compelling exponents of 20th-century music – never more penetrating than when directing the virtuoso players of his own Ensemble Intercontemporain. In this inspired triple-bill from the Theater an der Wien, recorded shortly before the master’s 80th birthday, soprano Anja Silja performs a fully-staged version of Schoenberg’s Pierrot Lunaire – paired by Boulez with near-contemporary masterworks by Stravinsky and De Falla. Viennese modernism meets the world of the Ballets Russes, in the hands of a conductor who approached all music through the lens of his own dazzling creativity.