This summer I had the pleasure of listening to the Belgrade Philharmonic Orchestra
performing in the once-ravaged Croatian coastal town of Dubrovnik. The concert, conducted by the Indian maestro Zubin Mehta, was beautiful and moving. A particularly memorable moment came when a
Croatian tenor sang a duet with a Serbian soprano. Under the Dalmatian sky, music served as a vehicle for human understanding and reconciliation.
How different the audience – and Zubin Mehta – must have felt when the performance of the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra in the Royal Albert Hall was disrupted by pro-Palestinian hoodlums, who brought the Promenade Concerts to a halt for the first time since 1895. Dissatisfied with disrupting the concert, some of the protesters had earlier decided to pollute the newspapers, sending a letter to the Independent denouncing the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra’s “involvement with the Israeli state.
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