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It’s been a busy week for Daniel Barenboim, internationally-renowned conductor and champion of Israeli-Palestinian peace. Yesterday, the UN Secretary designated him among a distinguished group of world citizens as a UN peace envoy. Today, he received the equivalent of the Nobel Prize in music, the Praemium Imperiale:
Daniel Barenboim, the conductor, pianist, author and activist, has been named the winner of the Praemium Imperiale for music. The Japan Art Association, which administers the awards, announced the news yesterday in Tokyo.
Created in 1989 and carrying a prize of 15 million yen (currently about US $129,000) each, the five Praemium Imperiale awards are given annually for outstanding achievement in five fields not covered by the Nobel Prizes: music, painting, sculpture, architecture and theater/film.
…The Praemium award citation cites in particular Barenboim’s well-known campaign against the taboo on performing Wagner in Israel, his activism on behalf of peace between Israelis and Palestinians, and the West-Eastern Divan Orchestra, an ensemble of young Arab and Israeli musicians which Barenboim founded in 1999 with his great friend and co-author, the Palestinian-American scholar Edward Said.
Bravo, maestro! The Amazon book link is to the Said-Barenboim literary collaboration, Parallels and Paradoxes.
Tags: israeli-music
Noticed the date on this last post. I guess that Yom Kippur thing got by you this year.
I thought is was slightly funny when you tried impugning my observance of Rosh Hashana. But now it’s getting old. I was in shul today and yesterday night. Is it your claim that a Jew can’t observe Yom Kippur and write a blog post and still be a Jew?
Don’t post this kind of snark again, Bill. It’s not even mildly amusing.
Reading this late. Daniel Barenboim is one of the most wonderful people I can think of. Good to see that his work is appreciated.
Pearlman, your comment is distracting from the topic. Doesn’t work, dear!
Keep up the good work, Richard.
just making a point. You might have left the anti Israel diatribes alone for at least one day. Yom Kippur. Yet you can’t even do that. Why?
Interesting that a post about Barenboim winning an award for championing peace bet. Israelis & Palestinians becomes an “anti Israel diatribe.”
I have a rule here that you just broke. Call me “anti-Israel” and you’re gone. Do it again & you will be.
Daniel Barenboim is a great conductor and musician. Unfortunately, I own only a few of his recordings. I’ve got the Beethoven and Brahms cello sonatos with his then-wife Jacqueline Du Pre and Barenboim on piano, and an amazing CD of Barenboim conducting the Orchestre de Paris in the greatest Debussy tone poems–La Mer, Nocturnes and, of course, Preludes a l’apres-midi d’un faune. Great stuff. I need more of his piano recordings.
Oops, “preludes” should be “prelude”, it’s singular.