Members of the West-Eastern divan Orchestra/Barenboim
***

Fidelio/Barenboim
****

Daniel Barenboim and Edward Said founded the West-Eastern Divan Orchestra in 1999 so as to demonstrate that young Israelis and Arabs could forge a creative co-existence, although both insisted that the orchestra would occupy a place on the world stage without allowances being made for its special nature. Said died in 2003 but Barenboim continues to extend the players’ boundaries.

On Friday, two dozen of them convened for a late-night chamber concert. The Albert Hall is on the large side for Mendelssohn’s Octet, and the string sound was somewhat recessed; interplay was sometimes blurred, the rhythmic drive occasionally slack.

Berg’s Chamber Concerto, with Barenboim conducting, was altogether more confident. It demands that the 15 players shine as soloists, even if only two of them are designated as such: violinist Michael Barenboim, the conductor’s son, and pianist Karim Said, distantly related to the orchestra’s co-founder. If that sounds like nepotism, their playing made it clear they were there on merit.

On Saturday, the full orchestra assembled for Beethoven’s Fidelio, in which freedom and oppression, darkness and light battle it out. In the theatre, the opera includes spoken dialogue; here we got a pre-recorded narration, written by Edward Said and delivered by Waltraud Meier, who also took the title role.

Barenboim had drilled his players well: crescendos were finely wrought, quiet passages had a superfine delicacy, with low strings giving off the dark shadows that Beethoven demands, while brass provided glints of light. As sometimes happens, it was the orchestra rather than the singers that proved the opera’s greatness.

Barenboim had a good rather than a great cast, although there were magnificent moments. Meier’s occasional harshness was a token of her total engagement, and tenor Simon O’Neill tempered Florestan’s Germanic angst with some radiant Italianate lyricism.

Rightly, though, the standing ovation was for the orchestra. It only abated when Barenboim gave a little speech praising his young charges as an example of how to live together, rather than back-to-back. He also suggested that great music can never simply serve a cause, even a good cause: food for serious thought there.
www.bbc.co.uk/proms