 Felly,今日 we are going to talk partly about Palestine and about Gaza and about Israel and about peace and about music. And I just wondered when you would then move to Israel, what impact you think that actually had on your music for a start? And how soon did it have an impact on your politics? The first thing that I remember was the shock of having to learn not only a new language but a new alphabet. I had left Argentina in the middle of the year, because being in the southern hemisphere in July was the equivalent of our December. So I left end of July and arrived in Israel at Christmas. a we started going to school, as I said, in a new language and with a new alphabet. So that was, that's really what preoccupied me the most at that time more than the music. The music was, from that point of view, relatively easy. But there was something extremely positive about the general atmosphere in Israel at the time. This would have been sort of 1953. Yeah, well January 1953. And it's actually quite interesting sometimes to look at the development of the conflict of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict from Israeli-Palestinian points of view together, but also independently. And if you look at the history of the modern history of Israel independently from the Palestinian side and the problem, you see that the State of Israel was declared on the 15th of May 1948 at that time by Ben-Gurion, who was the head of the Labour Party. Then there was a war. The war was won. And the Labour Party remained in power in Israel until 1977. It's a very long time. And the Labour Party in Israel then was, how shall I say, was slightly different from Labour Party's anywhere else. There was socialism in an active way, as I at least have not seen anywhere else. There were the Kibbutzim. There was the Moshaf, the Moshaf where there was common property, but the possibility of individual earnings and the Kibbutz where everything was collective. And it worked for such a long time and you have to ask yourself why. On the sort of nationalistic side, the Labour Party had no opposition. The war had been won. So what more can a nationalist party offer as a problem? There was nothing to offer. And the religious parties where some of them openly and overtly anti-Israel because they believed there was no need for a state of Israel until the Messiah came and it had to be a religious state. No, no, this was true. So the Labour Party had absolutely no opposition to speak of. No opposition to speak of. And the socialist system worked much better than in many other places because I'm basically an optimist and I believe in the human beings, good intentions and good thoughts and good feelings. And therefore I believe that hardly anybody in this world has anything against the idea of socialism. It's with the implementation that it is more difficult and you get extreme cases like in the Soviet Union and other countries in Eastern Europe where people had the feeling they had enough of this idea of socialism and communism because they basically couldn't work for themselves. They only work for the state. But the state of Israel was being created. It was in embryo. Therefore you could work for the state and work for yourself and vice versa. And this is why humanly it was a very positive ambiente. There was a very positive atmosphere in Tel Aviv at that time. It was very much more... I will come in a second if I may to the changes. At that time it was very much based on European Jews that had been coming. And secular? Secular and European. Secular and European that had been coming basically since the 20s. And there were two major centres of immigration. One was Central Europe, mostly German, Austrian and Czech. And of course the Eastern part, the Russian and Polish. That was very much the basis of all. This is why so many, so to speak, European at that time much more than now. European activities were so developed in Israel. Music for a start and theatre. But music, you know, the famous story when Yasha Haifetz came to play in 1953 I think it was. And he played the Beethoven Concerto. And there was some misunderstanding about the car that was supposed to pick him up to take him to the rehearsal. And so he took a taxi and the taxi driver recognised him and said to him, Mr Haifetz, what condenser do you play the Beethoven Concerto? But that was typical of Israeli society then. He probably, the man was probably a former professor of the university in Hanover. Anyway, that was the picture of society as I remember. I have to say also that the Holocaust was never mentioned. The children of my age, I was 10 at the time, were not interested. They didn't want to hear about all that. They were not interested in this. They didn't care, but they wanted to create a new image of a healthy Jew that was not only about the studies of the Talmud or about music or being a banker, but of agriculture, of development in so many other areas, etc. The parents of course, the parents of my schoolmates who had suffered through the hell of the Holocaust, didn't want to talk about it because it was much too painful. This was after all only seven years after the end of the war. You will see in a minute why I'm telling you all this. Anyway, so you had a basically labor government based on socialism, of course also on the idea that there was a justification for the Jewish people to be. In other words, it was Zionist socialism. That went on until 1967, ten years before the country changed political direction. As a result of the 1967 war, many things of what I have just narrated now changed. First of all, there was very cheap Palestinian labor available from 1967 on for quite a number of years. Palestinians would come from Gaza, from Ramallah, from Nablus, from everywhere to Haifa, to Tel Aviv, everywhere, and it was very cheap labor, much cheaper labor. Therefore, the first Israeli fortunes were achieved thereby eroding the idea of socialism. Number one, politically, there was a situation where Israel was in control of so many territories, and therefore the logical question was, do we keep the territories or do we give them back? There was an immediate difference of opinion at that time between the same Bengurion who was already retired, and the right wing party begging, the Khirut was called at the time, what is today, the Likud, and the religious parties started being more flexible about the date of the arrival of the Messiah. Because they said these are not occupied territories, these are liberated territories, and they are not only liberated territories, they are biblical liberated territories. So maybe this has to be kept in waiting for the imminent arrival of the Messiah. And therefore you had a clear choice politically and socially, purposely refraining from commenting for now on the effect of all this on the Palestinians, which is not because of lack of importance, but just to really see the project. In 1961 Adolf Aishman had been brought to trial in Israel from Argentina with the idea that it was extremely important for the education of the new generation to come to really terms and to understand the horrors of all that, because it was a shattering experience. I was most of the time during the trial in Israel, and it was really very, very painful. Then comes the next change, and that is the fact that Israel defends mechanism in the 50s and early 60s based on French cooperation, the whole atomic, the so. At that time today, the president of Israel, Simon Perez, was minister of defense, and he was the architect of the defense. But in 1967, De Gaulle realized that it was more in France's interest to be in good terms with the Arabs, especially with Iraq at the time than Israel, and therefore made a clean break with that. That put Israel, or the Israelis, put themselves entirely in the hands of the United States. Thereby changing everything. First, if it was a European-inspired society in the 50s, it became gradually more and more American-inspired. The work of the contact to European culture was forgotten, and the state became much more American-orientated. With the result, or maybe the coincidence, I would know that there was quite a large immigration of religious Jews from Brooklyn, who came with a very, very right-wing mentality and influenced very much the social climate in Israel. In 1970, you see that in a very short time everything changed. In 1970, there was the first large immigration of Soviet Jews that were allowed out in 1970. They also came with a obviously different, because they were not religious, but a very similar right-wing way of thinking. They had suffered from very strong antisemitism in the Soviet Union. Let us not forget that in the past, when it said nationality for Jews, they had to put Jewish as if it was a nationality. Although there were Soviet nationals, antisemitism was very clear and very strong. Some of the time, it was very open to the trials of the doctors in the 50s, by Stalin, etc. They came from having suffered several generations of very strong, open antisemitism in the Soviet Union. Suffered from being discriminated in every possible way, and suffered also from all the difficulties that the society suffered from lack of freedom, and lack of so many other things for which the Soviet Union was and is criticized. Therefore, you had right-wing religious American Jewry, combined with right-wing victims of communism Jewry from the Soviet Union, and that changed completely the makeup of Israeli society. There was a meantime, of course, also the immigration from other countries, non-European countries. It was the Iraqi Jews that came in the 50s, and the Yemenite Jews, and then they got from Ethiopia, etc. So the whole makeup changed completely. As a result of all that, plus the Eichman trial, suddenly the Holocaust, the memory of the Holocaust, and this is what I find, and I say that as an Israeli, as you know I have many nationalities, but as an Israeli I find that the most abhorring is the politicization of the remembrance of the Holocaust. Everything now has to be explained to the world in terms of the trauma that all the Jewish people suffered because of the Holocaust. Certainly in no way reducing the horrors of the Holocaust, but to say that we cannot go to the peace table with the Palestinians because we don't get enough guarantees from them, we don't get this and we don't get the other, and we must avoid the second Holocaust, as if Palestinians lack of acceptance of so many things to do with Israel. In a way even about the existence of the state of Israel to equate that with European anti-Semitism is totally wrong. And it is against all the traditions of Jewish thought of the morality of it. In any case, this is how I feel the situation was, and therefore when one talks about the modern state of Israel, one has to talk about it in two periods from 1948 until roughly 1967, if you want 77, because it all takes a little bit of time. And what happened since then? If you would just to look at present day Israel and look at the makeup of the country now, what percentage is left of that original secular European ideal? I don't know. 20%? I would not venture an opinion because I don't know enough precisely. You have the feelings that most Israeli enlightened people vote with their feet by leaving the country. They don't vote at their lectures, they simply go. I don't know how many there are, but Jerusalem is a very clear case when I was even younger than now. When I was very young, I used to go to the lectures at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem of Martin Buber and Max Broad, who had been so close to Kafka, and there was a lot of, all this has disappeared. Jerusalem is now a sort of mostly a religious village, has become a religious village on the Jewish side. I think that with the passage of time and all these changes, many Israelis have actually lost or maybe never had an idea of what life is for the Palestinians, especially since 1967. The very interesting thing is that particularly for younger people, you've sketched something which is completely contrary to what most, I think, young people would see Israel as being. The Holocaust is now such a central plank of the ideological argument, and you're saying that in your childhood it wasn't there at all. It was never mentioned. When I say a politicisation of the Holocaust, to give a small example, because it is small, but actually very, very poignant, the whole problem is Wagner. You should not play Wagner. There were court cases over you trying to play Wagner, and they eventually succeeded. In the end, the argument is what? The argument is, I'm trying to put this objectively as I can, the argument is for better or for worse, there is an inevitable association between Wagner's music and the Nazi regime. True. Therefore, whether the association was only used or abused is of no interest, what is important is that this has left such an impact on the memory that it cannot be expected of survivors of the Holocaust to be faced with the fact that the music of Richard Wagner would be played on Israeli soil. First of all, I don't know what gives a government the right to decide what is tolerable or intolerable for somebody who has suffered the horrors of the Holocaust. I'm perfectly in agreement with the fact that as long as these generations are alive, there is no reason to confront people with the obligation to go and hear Wagner. I would be against any Israeli orchestra playing Wagner in a subscription concert, where if you were a loyal subscriber, you had a ticket for 12 concerts a year, and you can't listen to this music. Why should you be faced in the fifth concert suddenly a work of Richard Wagner, and you don't want to stop going to the concert etc. But if you make a Wagner concert, which is not on a subscription, where everybody who actually wants to hear it has to go to the box office or now in the internet and buy a ticket for it, where is the problem? If I suffer from these terrible associations, then I don't go, but why should I be able to impose upon you who may be fortunately do not suffer from this association? Or why should I allow the government to stop you from going to hear that simply because of it? When this subject is mentioned, I always give the example of the great Jewish Hungarian writer, Imre Curtis, who was in Auschwitz and who suffered the horrors of the Holocaust in its fullest possible way. When I met him and became friendly very quickly, the first thing he ever asked of me was to help you get a ticket to Bayreuth. I mean, you understand what I'm saying, there is something that the Israeli government, governments in the last whatever number of years have taken upon themselves to which is a lack of, actually it is a lack of democratic incentive. And that of course influences the whole issue with the Palestinians, needless to say. I mean, if I stuck on that, I don't think you have enough time. We're going to get on to that, but there was one thing that I wanted to do before we reached that, that is what happened to your own personal journey within this evolving environment of Israel? At what point? You said, you know, people have no idea now today of the lives of Palestinians. You intersected with them because of course they were very present in society in service and in all sorts of ways. I mean, even I, when I first went to Israel, if you arrived at a Ben-Gurion airport, your bags would be sorted and carried by Palestinians. Today they are Sri Lankans or Thais or Philippines. So what happened to your journey? You arrived at age 10, knowing nothing. The Israeli political narrative of the time was the Jewish people suffered throughout history from anti-Semitism in Europe, the Dreyfus case in France. So many, Schmelnitzky in Ukraine who murdered so many Jews, the Spanish Inquisitions. In other words, you see that it's not an odd moment, but it is something that goes throughout history and without any limitation of boundaries in Spain, in Ukraine, in Russia, in France, in Germany, and of course culminating with the whole of this course. And therefore, we, the Jewish people, because of the historical rights, have a possibility and the right to settle in the land of our ancestors, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. And this became here and then we were so thrilled on the 29th of November 1947 when there was the resolution for the partition of Palestine. We were so thrilled to get just a small piece of land. The Arabs didn't want to share with us and therefore the state of Israel was created and the same night or the next day, six Arab nations attacked the state of Israel. We fought bravely against them and we won the war and since then we are constantly under threat. This was a political narrative. I was ten years old. I have to admit I didn't have the capacity to, intellectual capacity to check all of that and to really see, but this was the narrative. In fact, because of this narrative, I believe, and now I have to digress it if you allow me, I believe that so many opportunities were missed by Israeli government in the 50s. This is, by the way, very, I think, objectively and very clearly described in Avish Lime's book, The Iron War. There were so many opportunities that were missed to make contact with the Arabs, including the great Arab nationalist, NASA, who took over from General Najib in 1952. In his program, there was nothing. The word Israel was not even mentioned. He was interested in the social conditions of his people in Egypt, et cetera, et cetera, so many other things. Do you know an interesting parallel with that? I was in Tahrir Square this time last year and the word Israel was never mentioned. Never mentioned. The entire issue was Egypt's social development. I think Israel missed three opportunities. There were three revolutions or revolutionary developments in Egyptian society and Israel missed the opportunity on all three cases. The first one in 1952 with NASA, the second one in 1979 and 80 with Sadat, where Sadat took the great risk to go to Jerusalem. He really needed, at that time, mostly economic support, which he did not get from the Israeli government at that time, headed by Begin. Therefore, the Egyptian people turned against him because he made peace with Israel, which they didn't understand why. And on top of that, he asked them to tighten their belt because there was no money, and that because of all the Egyptian history of the point, instead of saluting this, Israel remained very, very, very tight and short on that. At that time, it was close last year, when, as you rightly said, where Israel was mentioned, but you heard a lot from Israel immediately about the dangers of this revolution. We don't know what will be the end of the Arab revolution for Egypt now, Syria. I would not attempt to make a guess about that. But the mere fact that a society, basically of 80 million people in Egypt, is able to peacefully go to the Holy Square and demand change, change for themselves, for better conditions of life, not only economically, economically, of course, but also of freedom, and also try to do things. This has to be saluted. The first thing you have to do in a case like this, both morally and strategically, if I may say so, from Israel's point of view, it should have saluted that and not say, well, if we do that, then we will only, this doesn't work like this. It should be saluted and then hope that it worked. But if you immediately say we are concerned about this, what do you expect people to say? Of course, they will be against any contact with Israel, any acceptance of Israel. At what point did Palestine begin to invade your music? I became aware, as it were, of the lack of knowledge that I had and I felt all my generation had from Israel in the 50s in 1970. I was very far away. I was in Australia. It was this terrible Black September in Jordan where so many thousands of Palestinians were killed by Jordanians, sorry, the Black September. The then Israeli Prime Minister, Golda Meir, said in an interview, what is this whole talk about the Palestinians? There is no such thing as the Palestinian people. The Palestinian people are we. We are the Palestinian people because we live in what used to be Palestine. I missed on something here and that's how I started sort of educating myself and it was not so easy because the new historians that have since come up with so many documents and so many different analysis were not in existence yet. But little by little I met more, I was very curious. Is that the period you met Edward Syed? No, no, no, no, long before. This is 1970, I only met Edward in 1992. No, no, no, it's a long time before that. And then I had a very interesting, I was part of a very interesting coincidence for me and I was in Prague in 1966, therefore one year before the war with the English Chamber Orchestra. And the day after we played there was a concert of Arthur Rubinstein with the Czech Philharmonic. And I finished the rehearsal with the English Chamber Orchestra and two young men, my age, I was 23, my age they came and introduced themselves and they said there were young musicians from Syria. I had never met a Syrian in my life and I had no idea that there were Syrian western musicians, where would I come and touch with them. But they were very charming, they were my age. And so we went out and had coffee and conversation. And after the concert, after the English Chamber Orchestra concert, to which of course I invited them, they asked me whether I could help them get into the Rubinstein rehearsals. And I said yes, I'm going to the rehearsal anyway, I can't stay for the concert because I'm leaving in the afternoon. You can come with me. So there I go to the Rubinstein rehearsal playing the Brahms B-flat concert with the Czech Philharmonic with my two newly acquired Syrian musician friends. And after the rehearsal of course I went to see Rubinstein and I thought he was such a curious human being too. He would really enjoy meeting him. So I said come along, I will take it. So I took the two Syrians to Rubinstein and after I greeted him and I said I would like to introduce two young musicians from Syria. He says musicians from Syria. He was so taken by it that he invited them to lunch, for which unfortunately I couldn't stay. So that was the day. And then one of them became the director of the conservatory in Damascus. I lost all touch. Then came the war and I lost all touch. I had no contact whatsoever. 33 years later, 33 years later, when Edward Said and I founded the Divan, he was very important in encouraging young Syrians musicians to come to the Divan because he remembered all this incident. Actually quite a touching story. But in any case, I was very curious and I began to get more and more the feeling that something was not quite right with the narration as I heard it as a child. And I found also many Israeli mainstream people, for one of a better word, who said, yes, yes, it's not quite right, but we had no choice. That was the best they could say. We had no choice. And in fact, I wrote quite a lot about all of this in my first book. I say that not in order to make publicity for my first book, but to show you that I had already made all this journey before I met Edward. And in fact, I met Edward at what was then the Hyde Park Hotel in Knightsbridge as I was checking in and he approached me and he says, you would know who I am. I'm Edward Said. I said, of course, I know who you are. I said, I didn't know what you looked like, but I know Orientalism, et cetera. And he said, I want to talk to you. He said, because I think you are a great musician. We will forget all of that. That's not important. But I read in your book all what you wrote. And that's very interesting because I've never heard an Israeli talk about it. And this was in fact the beginning of the friendship with Edward. And from it sprang the orchestra. Again, one of those legends that has not much to do with reality because Edward Said was one of the most intelligent human beings I ever had a good fortune to meet. And without being unduly arrogant, I don't really think of myself as the most stupid of people and that the two of us would think and now we are going to create this wonderful orchestra. Of course, rubbish to use good English rubbish. What we wanted was in 1999 when Weimar was declared cultural capital of Europe to create a forum at the request of the authorities who were running the festival to create a forum where young people from the Middle East, from all the countries of the Middle East, therefore Israel, Palestine, Syria, et cetera, et cetera, all the countries would come together for a seminar, for a workshop of music making and conversation on humanistic subjects and of course the conflict. And we thought of somewhere between 10 and 15 young musicians and Edward would have come and I would have worked with them, et cetera, et cetera. And this is how we really got started on the idea. But I was very much aware of the fact that we knew a lot more about the standard, musical standard of Israeli musicians than we knew about Arab, even Edward who knew everything there is to know about the Arab world had no idea about the level of musicians. And we thought about it and decided to ask the Goethe Institute, which is the cultural arm of the German government to help us make auditions in the Arab countries so that we would start there knowing what to expect from Israel and to see what we would find there. And therefore my then assistant at the Staatsoper who is today the music director of the Frankfurt Opera, Sebastian Weigle, I asked him to go since I could go myself, I asked him to go to Damascus, Beirut, Amman and Cairo to make auditions organized by the Goethe Institute. And you can imagine my surprise and Edward, of course, when we had more than 200 applications only in this four countries, over 200 applications for a workshop with Edward Said and with me for two weeks or three weeks, whatever it was, in Weimar in 1999. And then he went and he listened to many of them. Others sent tapes, video or audio tape and he made the initial selection, he reduced from 200 plus to 60 and then down to 40 or 30 and I listened to those and I made a still final selection from that. And only then did we send him to Tel Aviv and Jerusalem to see what he could find in Israel. And that was my first surprise that the best of the Arab musicians were no less good than the best of the Israelis. Although in Israel there was a much greater tradition of music, the worst or the less good of the Arab were in fact less good than the lowest. But it was clear from that that we had to make an orchestra. There was no way that we could justify a selection from that to only 10 or 15 to make a little chamber music group. And this is how the West East and the West started, came into being. But if you then track from that foundation to its present vibrant condition and the work that you're doing, has anything happened that makes you feel that what you've achieved has in any way been matched or approached by people who believe they want to make peace? No, but you see this is what very often in my more negative or depressed mood gives me encouragement that we must be doing something right since we have more or less equal support, mental support and equal level of criticism in the Arab world and in Israel. So if everybody was all of those who are against the idea, are against the idea, there must be something right about it. If it was only one side, if it was only one side, then one would ask the question. In 1999 when they came to Weimar, there were 60% if not more of the orchestra that had never played in an orchestra. I would say more, more than 70%. And 40% had never heard a live concert on an orchestra. And they were confronted with the Seven Symphony of Beethoven and the Schumann cello concerto with Yo-Yo Ma. Yo-Yo was completely fascinated by the idea and I think sort of the quiet, secret feeling of Chinese imperialism in him. Made you want to join us and he played a wonderful role. He gave classes and he gave master classes. In fact there was a 15 year old boy from the area from Weimar who came and took lessons from Yo-Yo who is today the principal cellist of the Staatscapelle who played yesterday. So the connection is really quite wonderful. So how is it possible that in eight years we could go from an orchestra of which the percentage was, as I just said, to playing one of the most difficult works in the repertoire like the Schoenberg variations at the Salzburg Festival on the level that the orchestra did. In fact one of the players who played there sitting right there as an extra guest she played. How is this possible? I mean we are all geniuses we know but still in eight years. And the reason was that we were able without having the possibility to calculate it. We were able to build a strategy for the development of the musicians in a way that was quite unique. In other words, the young musicians were trained by principal players from the Staatscapelle and at that time brass from Chicago. And in 2002, in other words, only three years after it was started, we were offered a home by the government of Andalusia who created this foundation and gave us the means not only to continue the program because it's very expensive to bring together young musicians from the Middle East, but some of them are in America, God knows where they are, to bring them all together to feed them for three weeks. In other words, you have to find a place to live to feed them etc. It's quite a substantial amount of money and they gave us all this plus they gave me an average of 150,000 euros to give scholarships. So what happened? A talented musician came from the Middle East and had the advantage of working for three weeks with a top musician from the Staatscapelle. Then he had the whole workshop with me with all the rehearsals and then we started touring and playing concerts etc. And at the end, this is all from the sort of middle of July and at the end of August when the period was finished, I was able to say to him, you are very talented, you have made a lot of progress. If you would like, now you can have a scholarship to go to Berlin and continue working with the same teacher for the next year. And many of them took advantage of that with the result that the following July when they came back, they were by themselves 30% better. And this is why it was possible to make such quick progress. In my experience, the attitude towards young orchestras and project with young musicians are not followed through. In other words, they have been a wonderful problem in this country, the English National Youth Orchestra at the time still with Abado and many others. You know, they get very good people to teach them, they do this workshop and that's the end of it. But it's really what happens after that that is so important. And this is why the musicians were able to make spiral improvement. But do you think that this could be extended into other parts of inter-communal life? Or does it have to take something with the extreme excellence which kind of removes it from the political fray? It's not just the excellence, it's the fact that music in the end is the most, in my view, the most unique combination of the most personal that is possible for a human being with the most abstract at the same time. You and I may interpret certain events in the world differently and we may have different ideas about intellectual matters, about economic matters, about political matters, what it is, and also about music, musical matters. But when you and I are sitting on the same stand of a string section in an orchestra, the music is more important than you and I and the music is responsible for the fact that at that moment you and I are going to think alike. The moment you and I have thought alike on the first note, how to play the same note with the same volume, with the same intonation, the same volume, the same length, the same expression, the same vibrato, the same string etc. The same, the same, the same, the same. And we do that for six or seven hours every day for three weeks, but by the time the evening comes, we have acquired the ability to think alike about something for which you and I are very passionate about. But this has to transmit itself to something else. I don't know how you would do that without the music. But do you earwig in on conversations at supper afterwards? Oh yes, but we have meetings. What do they talk about? Do they talk about what else they can do? Look, the best thing I can say is we have stopped talking about the conflict because we have done that for so many years. We know what everybody thinks. We know what everybody expects and therefore we have to go on. And we have simply learned to accept the fact that somebody whom we actually like in some cases are even attracted to, we continue to disagree about this, and we have learned to spend time together. I won't say live together, but spend time together knowing that we disagree, that we will not attempt anymore to convince the other one about this, but that we know that whether we like it or not, we are blessed or cursed to living in a way that we have some kind of contact with each other. This is what it does. It's not an orchestra for peace. It's an orchestra for this. But you've taken us to the very heart of what I think both mystifies and excites everybody in this room about you. You've described exactly what happens to a musician, the whole business of being six or seven hours sharing a stand absorbed in this experience, sharing this experience. And in one sense is that for many that detaches them from the real world and they live in this gorgeous arena, very hard work but nevertheless utterly uplifting and absorbing life. So what is it about you that enables you to connect so earthly with the conflict? Most musicians are not connected to the conflict. Music is obviously a very spiritual activity. You can't describe it anywhere else. It has all the abilities to inspire human beings to do all the things that we have just talked about. Music is also extraordinarily physical. In the end it is purely physical, objectively speaking, it's physical. There is no sound here. You bring a musician in here. He makes a sound. He literally brings this sound to the real world. And therefore this is what adds to the fact that we think about it because after all if you have two young people who are very interested in philosophy and they study together they will also immerse themselves six or seven hours together in the study of philosophy. But this will not give them the possibility to physically have to express that together. This is the strength of the music. And I have been, and this is the, in fact was the basis of my friendship with Edward Said, was that we were very unhappy about many things but about two things in particular. One was the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in all its aspects and ramifications and we were very concerned with the lack of curiosity. That I must say on both sides because there are many aspects of the conflict that are asymmetrical starting from the fact that Israel is a powerful nation. And the Palestinians haven't got a nation as yet but there are some aspects of the conflict that are absolutely symmetrical. And the first aspect that is symmetrical is the lack of curiosity about the Alex. And Edward and I were very concerned about that and that's why one of the main reasons we got involved with this project. And the second subject that bothered us very much and still continues to bother me in fact more and more as the years go about is that music has been seen for many years and is becoming so much more so now an expression of an ivory tower. In other words there's no music education in the schools. So if you are born into a family anywhere in England, in America, in Australia, wherever, where no music is being made, nobody sings, nobody plays, there's no recording, nothing. It's a great majority of people. Then you go to kindergarten, no contact with music. You go to school, no contact with music. You are talented, you go to university, you become a doctor or a lawyer. Now you are in your 20s, you have children, you have a family and somebody, a friend says to you when you are 29 or 32, oh you know, have you heard the Vienna Philharmonic? You say, Vienna Philharmonic, what is that? You say, Vienna Philharmonic is one of the greatest orchestras in the world. And you say, an orchestra is where musicians play, I have nothing to do with it or you must go to that. It's really the most wonderful orchestra in the world. You know, if you are in London, when they come to London, it will be good for you to be seen at that concert too, by all your friends. And so you go to the concert of Vienna Philharmonic in the festival hall where they play the same Schoenberg variations. What can you get out of that? Zero. Zero. Therefore, we have to deal with the fact that the people who go to concerts and we are so happy and so grateful to them that they come. And I think of that every time that after so many years people still want to come and hear me play wrong notes. I think this is absolutely wonderful. And you have all these people who come to be what a journey they have made because they had no help from society, from education and things. And therefore it is completely in an ivory tower. And on the other hand, you have children who have an aptitude for music and maybe ambitious parents and they send them to the conservatories or to the academies to study music. And they study music. And how do they study music? They study music also in an ivory tower. They are taught about how to play hemi-demi semi-quavers. What a wonderful word. Hemi-demi semi-quavers, softly, loudly, short notes, long notes, powerfully, sentimentally, et cetera, et cetera. But they are completely ignorant of everything else that has actually had been happening and is still happening next to music. Literature, painting, human condition, philosophy, all of that. I'm not trying to say that you can explain the Beethoven symphony from a philosophical system point of view. But it is obvious that Beethoven was not just a master of harmony and counterpoint that he had an important statement to make. And therefore that statement must have had some connections of the statements that were being made by other great men at that time. The mere fact that today so many hundreds of years later we are still interested in the Beethoven symphonies and those of us who are musicians, continuously work on them and those who are listening go and listen to them, there must be something about it. But all this is totally absent from the musical education of the conservatory. And therefore you have both from the performing musicians to the public a creation of something which in my view can only be described as an ivory tower. Now when you put that together with the conflict, where it is also each one living his ivory tower, the Israeli in his ivory tower. And it is absolutely essential to put all of this together. And this is what the divine is about. Well you've elegantly pulled us into the finale direct from the overture. Just tell me this, are you optimistic about the Middle East or downcast? Optimism sometimes is a form of self-defence. You see in the end the beauty of your eclecticism is that you're a philosopher as well as everything else. It has been the promised treat. So thank you very very much.