The thing about Wagner is we’re always wrong about him, because he always embraces opposites … There are things in his operas which viewed one way ar… - Daniel Barenboim

Every musician here has played these pieces many times, sometimes hundreds of times. Yesterday we looked at this music as if we had seen it for the first time. We never accept that the next note will played the same way it was played before. Thinking anew is our daily activity. I hope all the people of this region can take note of that.

Despite the fact that as an art, music cannot compromise its principles, and politics, on the other hand, is the art of compromise, when politics transcends the limits of the present existence and ascents to the higher sphere of the possible, it can be joined there by music. Music is the art of the imaginary par excellence, an art free of all limits imposed by words, an art that touches the depth of human existence, and art of sounds that crosses all borders. As such, music can take the feelings and imagination of Israelis and Palestinians to new unimaginable spheres.

I have lived as a Jew in Berlin for the past 23 years, something that would not have been possible if I did not believe that the Germans had thought long and hard about their past. No one else has managed to do this to the extent the Germans have, and I admire them for it.