The full-force culture war has reached, well, culture.
The outrage at an Israel Philharmonic Orchestra concert in Paris last week saw fist fights, as well as incendiary devices and seats set on fire. The dramatic footage from the Paris Philharmonie has been viewed millions of times on social media, as the vandals doubtless intended. There were three interruptions, the most sickening being the one where a man dressed in a gray jacket brandishes a lit flare, which subsequently sets some seats on fire, after which he is set upon by understandably furious concert-goers.
All the while, the orchestra and their distinguished piano soloist, András Schiff, are on the stage, and indeed, despite being removed for a brief period while safety officers made sure that the fires were out and the vandals were ousted (in fact, arrested), the show went on. One should also say that such an outrage is far from the norm at IPO concerts, nor should such disgusting behavior be normalized.
Let’s assume that the brutish interrupters saw this as a legitimate protest against policies of Israel’s government and that they are not supporters of something darker (music events, in general, are under attack; three Taylor Swift concerts in Vienna last year were canceled for acute security concerns, not to mention the Nova music festival in southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023). Their cheerleaders have caroled that the IPO receives state subsidies, that it effectively acts as an official ambassador of the Israeli government, and that it is inherently political.
Here is why this is entirely wrong.
First of all, the IPO gets relatively little state subsidy. Compared to almost any other major national orchestra around the world, it’s the poor relative, heavily relying on box-office tickets and donors. Even so, Israel is a tiny country with a population of fewer than 10 million people, so even the donor base at home is small. Like most great orchestras, it could not exist without some taxpayer funding, and many taxpayers are happy to oblige—Israel has one of the highest population percentages of any country subscribing to an orchestra, and Israelis regard the IPO as an icon. So the public funding is a matter of culture, not politics.
What about its vaunted role as “Israel’s greatest cultural ambassador”? In this meme-truncated world, one has to think a bit more deeply. Consider the entire phrase in materials from one of the IPO supporters’ organizations: “The Israel Philharmonic proudly serves as Israel’s greatest cultural ambassador, unifying diverse audiences through shared, transformative artistic experiences and enriching communities with music education programs that transcend borders.”
The second half clarifies the first. Transforming lives, enriching communities, transcending borders—this is what culture can do and what cultural ambassadors should do. And just as the symbolic head of the Israeli state is not the prime minister, but the apolitical president (who has next to no political power), the IPO represents the cultural identity of Israel, not its politics. Israel’s Declaration of Independence aspires to these values, and Israel’s existence is defined by these values, whether the politicians of the moment live up to them or not. The Israel Philharmonic certainly does.
Viewing art as a way to join hands with the world in the equalizing act of listening to music, the IPO tours more than almost any other orchestra. In its early days as the Palestine Symphony Orchestra (back in the 1930s, when the Jews of the region were called Palestinians), it even played in Cairo and Beirut. In more recent times, it has returned to Muslim states when it could, performing in Azerbaijan and, as soon as the Abraham Accords allowed, Abu Dhabi (in 2022).
There is a delightful entry in the blog of longtime double-bass player Peter Marck, now retired, where he notes that he and some of his fellow musicians played one merry evening in the home of then-Israeli Ambassador to the United States Michael Oren. The Egyptian ambassador was also there, culminating in Oren enthusiastically joining in on an Irish drum (boran) and then spoons! Marck does not recall what, if anything, his opposite number from Cairo played.
Did such musical high-jinx help the politics between Oren and the Egyptians? Maybe (nothing wrong with that, and much right, if it did), but that doesn’t make it politics. That group of musicians was, in fact, a long-running IPO-presented initiative called “Sheshbesh,” comprising Jews and Arabs playing together (and yes, they even play a medley of Palestinian wedding songs).
Whether the orchestra can visit certain places—Arab states, or even Judean and Samaria (aka the West Bank)—is, of course, made easier (or harder, and sometimes, impossible) by politics, but that doesn’t mean they don’t aspire to the nonpolitical ideal of sharing music everywhere they can with everyone they can. The IPO clearly isn’t going to play in Tehran anytime soon. Yet recent years have seen guest artists in Tel Aviv, such as Iranian harpsichordist Mahan Esfahani and Austrian-Iranian cellist Kian Soltani. The IPO brings artists from all around the world, not the least of which is having had a Farsi-Indian music director for half a century in Zubin Mehta.
Meanwhile, members work hard to reach into different sectors of Israeli society.
Israeli-Arab musicians they have supported in various ways include violinists Yaman Saadi, now a concertmaster of the Vienna Philharmonic, and Nasif Francis, a member of the IPO Academy scheme. Their education projects in Arab society in Israel have included, variously, going into schools, and bringing 6,000 Arab children to Tel Aviv to sing along as the IPO played specially orchestrated Persian folk songs.
The orchestra has secular members and religious members. As a body, it does not get politically involved.
The IPO’s founder, violinist Bronisław Huberman, who encouraged Jewish musicians to flee the Nazis and come to live and play in the new Jewish homeland, saw the orchestra as a way to combat antisemitism.
What did he mean by that? Surely, that sitting together with other people in a concert hall—sharing the same music in the same moment—makes opening your heart a communal act. It dignifies, in the best way, those who play it and those who listen to it, especially the way the IPO makes music.
There is no dignity, no opening of hearts, in setting seats on fire at a concert. There are other words for that barbarous act.
