BBC Proms 2015: West-Eastern Divan Orchestra/Barenboim – Barenboim and company rise to the challenge

Despite a few minor flaws, Barenboim led his orchestra in a taut, rhythmic performance with a fine sense of dramatic momentum, says Barry Millington 
Testing their mettle: Daniel Barenboim put his orchestra through its paces at the Proms
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Barry Millington19 August 2015

Daniel Barenboim has never been one to shirk a challenge. Some 16 years ago he embarked, with his friend Edward Said, on what seemed an impossible mission: to persuade Arabs and Israelis to share desks in the same orchestra. Even if a political solution to the Middle East conflict remained elusive, the hope was that such a project would foster understanding between the two sides. The West-Eastern Divan Orchestra, these days fleshed out with Spanish players, has now appeared many times at the BBC Proms.

As though to put the orchestra on its mettle, Barenboim opened last night’s programme with Schoenberg’s Chamber Symphony No 1. Unconventional in form, there are vestiges of the traditional symphony, for example in a lyrical slow movement, where violin and viola combined with woodwind to eloquent effect.

Tuning and voicing may not have been flawless throughout, and the climactic eruption led by the two horns lacked something in exuberance, but it was a taut, rhythmic performance with a fine sense of dramatic momentum.

Beethoven’s Triple Concerto is also a testing piece for orchestra as it’s often more of an intimate conversation than a traditional gladiatorial contest. Of the three solo instruments, the cello has the plum part and principal cellist Kian Soltani seized his opportunity, phrasing the opening solo with exquisite subtlety. His playing throughout was superlative, threatening to eclipse that of his fellow soloists, not least Guy Braunstein, one-time concertmaster of the Berlin Philharmonic though he may be. Barenboim took the piano part. Happiness and contentment are only glimpsed in Tchaikovsky’s Fourth Symphony, and then in retrospect, but that sense of emotional fragility came across well. The first encore, Sibelius’s Valse Triste, picked up the melancholy mood, while the second, Glinka’s Ruslan and Ludmila Overture, sent the audience away whistling merrily.

The BBC Proms (bbc.co.uk/proms) continue until Sept 12.

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