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.
The three Carter works were written when the composer was 97, 94 and 101. Digest that for a moment. Opening the concert on solo viola, Barenboim discovered a keening lyricism at the core of the spiny, tonally vague Figment IV. In the jerky, tongue-in-cheek Au Quai, he was joined by bassoonist Mor Biron, drawing chuckles with their genial musical banter. Duettone, one of the few works written by a centenarian, was a chattering micro-symphony for violin (Barenboim) and cello (Assif Binness) complete with scintillating pizzicato scherzo.
The second half featured a wonderfully organic performance of Beethoven’s career-launching Septet. Full of joie de vivre, it felt at times like a musical football match between strings and woodwind, refereed by David Santos Luque’s steadfast double bass. Daniel Gurfinkel’s silken clarinet and Ben Goldscheider’s swashbuckling horn made their mark in a sublime reading brimming with collegiate conviviality.
Chamber music of this calibre stands or falls on mutual respect and players listening intently to one another. If only politicians could learn to follow suit.
