On the day when hundreds of thousands of people marched through London calling for a peaceful resolution to the Israel-Gaza conflict, across town nine musicians quietly made a similar point. Ever since its foundation by Israeli conductor Daniel Barenboim and Palestinian scholar Edward Said in 1999, the West-Eastern Divan Orchestra has been as much about the message as the music. At the Queen Elizabeth Hall, the orchestra’s chamber ensemble – led by the co-founder’s son, concertmaster Michael Barenboim – let the music do the talking, interspersing masterpieces by Mendelssohn and Beethoven with palate-cleansing bursts of late Elliott Carter.
At the heart of the first half was a spirited account of Mendelssohn’s B-flat string quintet. Barenboim’s violin soared sweetly over a cushion of strings, warmed by the addition of that extra viola, in a performance stuffed with tunefulness and conversational bonhomie. The lilting delicacy of the rustic dance and the likable, scurrying finale were notable pleasures, but what really caught the breath was the solemn tread of the adagio. Resisting the urge to wallow, the five players delivered a profound reading of perhaps the most beautiful music Mendelssohn ever wrote.
