The Israel Chamber Orchestra has broken a longstanding taboo by
performing music by Hitler's favourite composer. The orchestra
included Wagner's Siegfried Idyll in its concert in
Bayreuth yesterday, as part of the fringe festival linked to the
town's annual Wagner opera festival. It was the first time an
Israeli orchestra has played Wagner in Germany.
An unofficial ban on playing Wagner's music was instituted by the
Palestine Orchestra (now the Israel Philharmonic) in 1938 after
Nazi attaacks on German Jews, and remained in place after the
founding of Israel ten years later. When Daniel Barenboim broke the
tradition in 2001 by conducting the Berlin Staatskapelle in music
from Tristan und Isolde in Jerusalem, dozens of audience
members walked out in protest.
Tuesday's concert in Bayreuth went ahead despite protests from
Zionist groups in Israel and the American Gathering of Holocaust
Survivors and their Descendants. The conductor of the Israel
Chamber Orchestra, Roberto Paternostro, declared ahead of the
concert that his intention was to separate Wagner's ideology from
his music.
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