Music as a Gateway to the World

A Conversation with Nabil Shehata

In November 2020, the Filasteen Young Musicians Orchestra was scheduled to play at the Pierre Boulez Saal for the first time— after the pandemic forced the cancellation of that performance, this special debut can now finally take place. Tonight’s concert is conducted by Nabil Shehata, who is closely associated with the hall and the Barenboim-Said Akademie. He spoke to Michael Kube last month.

Nabil, how did the contact with the Filasteen Young Musicians Orchestra come about?

Our link was the West-Eastern Divan Orchestra, in which I played until 2011–2. Throughout that time, I also participated in the festival led by Elena Bashkirova in Jerusalem. During these stays, I would often go to Ramallah, visiting the Barenboim-Said Center for Music, which opened there in 2003. So I was fortunate to follow the genesis of the institution and the development of the young musicians. I think it’s remarkable that today the Center is able to put together a chamber orchestra from its own ranks of young Palestinians who train there. Some of the best of them have made it to the Barenboim-Said Akademie here in Berlin. This background led to the opportunity for me to conduct the orchestra for its Pierre Boulez Saal debut. I’m delighted to do so, and very honored that Daniel Barenboim has trusted me with this. But I also believe that my young colleagues are just as happy, because they know I have Egyptian roots myself and was a member of the West-Eastern Divan Orchestra for a long time. They know me as a coach, they don’t see me as an outsider, so to speak, and that I’m familiar with the whole story. At the same time, I also know how these young people live in and around Ramallah, how their lessons work; I’m familiar with the locality and have known many of them since their childhood.

What role does western classical music play in Ramallah in general?

Of course there are concerts, but there isn’t the kind of infrastructure we are familiar with in Europe. There are many challenges, including very personal ones. It starts with passports: some people in Palestine have an Israeli passport, others don’t. Anyone who has such a passport can cross the border, but most of the young musicians living in Ramallah don’t, so they can’t go to Jerusalem or Tel Aviv to work with a teacher. That’s why it’s so important to build something there.

That means the trip to Berlin had logistical challenges as well. It’s complicated. I was asked myself, for example, if I was allowed to travel via Tel Aviv or had to take the land route via Amman— which takes much longer and involves far more hurdles. I have a German passport, which makes things much easier for me. But I remember the 2005 concert with the Divan in Ramallah very well. At the time, it was extremely difficult, and we had to split into different groups to travel there.

In a way, for these young people, music represents the gateway to the world. They hope to someday play well enough to get a scholarship and study at the Barenboim-Said Akademie, for instance, and later join an orchestra academy or get an orchestra job. On the other hand, from the early years it has been part of the idea of the West-Eastern Divan Orchestra for some of the graduates to go back to their homelands, passing on what they learned at the conservatories in Europe as teachers to the next generation, building musical self-confidence in their home countries. Those are very personal decisions: do I want to take the risk of building something, or could I have an orchestra job in Germany? Some have made very successful careers, like the pianist Karim Said, who founded the Amman Chamber Orchestra and established the Amman Institute for Performing Arts, where he is music director and teacher.

You’ve already mentioned your work with the West­Eastern Divan Orchestra. Today you teach double bass as a professor at the Barenboim­Said Akademie and are chief conductor of the South Westphalia Philharmonic. You also have close personal ties with Daniel Barenboim. How did you come to know each other?

This summer it will be 20 years, almost exactly to the day of this concert, that I first met Daniel Barenboim. It was in early July 2003; I had just turned 20 and had an audition as a double bass player with the Staatskapelle Berlin. It was for a place in the orchestra academy—instead they offered me a one-year contract as a principal! I was also supposed to join their tour to Spain right away. So I thought, well, then I can play for Daniel Barenboim there. Long story short: one afternoon in Madrid, I found myself on stage, and sitting in the auditorium was not only Maestro Barenboim but the entire orchestra as well. I hadn’t expected it to be a real audition, and I didn’t know at the time that the chief conductor can veto any decision on hires. But it went well, and afterwards Daniel Barenboim asked me where I was from. When he heard that I was half-Egyptian, he immediately said: “You must come and play in the West-Eastern Divan Orchestra.” I had only been in Berlin for eight or nine months and had no idea what kind of orchestra it was. “You’ll like it,” he said. “It’ll start right away; after these concerts with the Staatskapelle we’ll go on tour for six weeks with the Divan.”—“But in early September there’s the ARD Competition, and I wanted to apply.”—“Do you really want to sit in Berlin all summer practicing?” (laughs) That’s exactly what I had been planning to do. But Daniel Barenboim easily convinced me—not least by promising to accompany me at the piano. So I told myself: forget the competition. No bass player has ever played with Maestro Barenboim. That’s how our collaboration began, and since I also got along well with his sons, our relationship became very close over the years. I still won the ARD Competition, by the way.

You then played as principal bass with the Berliner Philharmoniker until 2008, but gave up that position to conduct…

That’s another thing Daniel Barenboim encouraged me to do, when I told him I had wanted to conduct since I was a teenager. To study conducting, you used to always have to audition as a pianist as well. I probably would have managed, but then there would have been a lot of coaching and I would have spent my days at the piano instead of playing bass. When I mentioned this to Maestro Barenboim, he was very surprised and said: “What does playing the piano have to do with conducting? I think I’m a decent pianist myself, but I’ve never played an orchestral piece on the piano. To learn a score you simply have to be able to read it.”

I realized he was right and that this shouldn’t stop me, just because that’s the way it works in Germany. I did a few conducting master classes, and before starting my new job at the South Westphalia Philharmonic in the fall of 2019, I assisted Maestro Barenboim at the Staatsoper here in Berlin for a while, to learn how an opera house works. I’m extremely grateful to him for opening my mind and showing me the way. So with this concert at the Pierre Boulez Saal, things really come full circle.

The program includes three works by Mozart—a challenge?

Mozart is always a challenge. He’s the hardest to play, because you need a very good bowing technique. Haydn might be even more difficult since everything is extremely open and transparent in his works. But compared to other music, Mozart is more accessible for young musicians. That’s why we programmed the “Great” G-minor Symphony. The orchestra wanted to do it and I was happy to agree. Some of the musicians already played this piece at the Musikverein in Vienna two years ago. They’re comfortable with it because they know how the piece works. Also, we have two very good clarinetists we can use here.

How are the rehearsals organized?

The orchestra rehearses in Ramallah first, learning the music. I’m working in Berlin with about a dozen musicians from the Barenboim-Said Akademie, who form the orchestra’s backbone, if you will. Then we fly to Ramallah together, where the tutti rehearsals take place. Our violin soloist, Milan Al-Ashhab, will join us there. Finally, we play a concert in Ramallah, and one week later we all meet again in Berlin.

Your job is not just an artistic but also an educational one. How do you prepare for it?

First of all, I see this as a workshop. Of course we have to play well, but most of all, it’s important to me that the young musicians learn something, beyond the project, something they can use for themselves. I take a chamber-music approach to rehearsing: the main thing is to pay attention and to listen to one another, to take care that everyone has the same bowings, not to just look at the conductor and follow my beat. The structure of the music plays a role as well, especially in Mozart. You have to understand what’s happening, where the climaxes are, when things relax. When I go to a concert myself, I never think, Oh, there’s an orchestra playing perfectly together, that’s great. When I hear a beautiful sound color, a certain intimacy, when the music touches me—that’s what makes me happy. Of course that’s a lot of work. But I don’t like repeating everything 30 times until it fits to the last detail. I’d rather say, Learn to breathe together, to move together. Then we can find a shared groove, and then we know we’re together. That’s much more important.

Translation: Alexa Nieschlag

Dr. Michael Kube is a member of the editorial board of the New Schubert Edition and has edited numerous urtext publications. He also works for the Berlin-based classical music streaming service Idagio, curates the Dresden Philharmonic’s family concert series, and is a juror for the German Record Critics’ Prize. He teaches at the Stuttgart Musikhochschule and at Würzburg University.