WATCH: Daniel Barenboim Makes Plea For European Unity
Image by Jakubaszek/Getty Images
By Talya Zax July 18, 2017
Daniel Barenboim, the famed and famously political pianist and conductor, delivered a moving call for European unity while conducting a BBC Proms concert by the Orchestra Staatskapelle Berlin on Sunday.
“I think that the main problem today is not the policies of this country and that country and this and that,” he said to an audience at London’s Royal Albert Hall. “The main problem of today is that there is not enough education.”
“There is not enough education about whom we are,” he continued, “about what is a human being, and how is he to relate to other[s] of the same kind.”
Barenboim, who was born in Argentina, also holds citizenship in Israel, Palestine, and Spain. He co-founded the West-Eastern Divan Orchestra and Berlin’s recently-opened Barenboim-Said Akademie with the late Palestinian scholar Edward Said, both of which institutions are intended to foster unity between Arab and Israeli musicians.
European culture, Barenboim said, was a gift taken for granted by too many.
“The new generations, they have to understand that Greece and Germany and France and Denmark all have something in common called European culture,” The Guardian quoted him as declaring.
“Not only the Euro. Culture. This is really the most important thing. And also in this cultural community called Europe there is a place for diverse cultures, for different cultures, for a different way of looking at things. But this can be done only with education.”
I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s award-winning, nonprofit journalism during this critical time.
Now more than ever, American Jews need independent news they can trust, with reporting driven by truth, not ideology. We serve you, not any ideological agenda.
At a time when other newsrooms are closing or cutting back, the Forward has removed its paywall and invested additional resources to report on the ground from Israel and around the U.S. on the impact of the war, rising antisemitism and the protests on college campuses.
Readers like you make it all possible. Support our work by becoming a Forward Member and connect with our journalism and your community.
Make a gift of any size and become a Forward member today. You’ll support our mission to tell the American Jewish story fully and fairly.
— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO
Join our mission to tell the Jewish story fully and fairly.
