Establishment In 1999, Barenboim and Said, who had become friends in the early 1990s, founded the West—Eastern Divan Orchestra in order to foment a feeling of sympathy and co-existence, chiefly between
Arabs and
Israelis, through
Middle Eastern musical ensembles. Shortly after it was founded, the first workshop was opened in
Weimar, Germany, after the organization had received over 200 applications from Arab music students. Barenboim has also expressed interest in musicians from
Iran, allocating three chairs for Iranian musicians to play in the orchestra each year; though Iran is not an
Arab country and therefore has not been a belligerent in the
Arab–Israeli conflict, that particular environment exists in light of the
Iran–Israel proxy conflict, which began a few years after Iran's
Islamic Revolution in 1979. In 2016,
Ban Ki-moon, the erstwhile
United Nations Secretary-General, designated the West–Eastern Divan Orchestra as a United Nations Global Advocate for Cultural Understanding, praising the organization's push for peace and unity, particularly between
Israelis and Palestinians.
Performances Since 2011, the West–Eastern Divan Orchestra has participated in an annual concert at the
Waldbühne in
Berlin, Germany. On 11 July 2012, in the presence of Italian president
Giorgio Napolitano and his wife
Clio Maria Bittoni, Barenboim led the West–Eastern Divan Orchestra's performance for
Pope Benedict XVI in the courtyard of the
Apostolic Palace of
Castel Gandolfo. The event commemorated the
Christian feast day of the 6th-century Italian monk
Benedict of Nursia (the
abbot who founded the
Benedictines), and thus the Pope's name day. A few days after the performance for Benedict XVI, Barenboim conducted the Orchestra's performance of the complete symphonic cycle of
Ludwig van Beethoven at the
BBC Proms in
London, England, marking the first time that all nine symphonies were performed under a single conductor in a single Prom season since English conductor
Henry Wood did so in 1942. In September–November 2012, the West–Eastern Divan Orchestra participated in the 9th
Gwangju Biennale (ROUNDTABLE), held in
Gwangju, South Korea. In May 2022, the orchestra opened the prestigious Prague Spring Festival with two concerts of Bedřich Smetana's tone poem
Má vlast (My Country). The originally scheduled conductor, Mo Daniel Barenboim, was replaced by conductor Thomas Guggeis due to illness. ==Purpose==