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2nd December 2008

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Most reviewed: Everything is Connected

26.08.08 Katie Allen

The most reviewed title last weekend was Everything is Connected by Daniel Barenboim (Weidenfeld), the virtuoso pianist and conductor who became an arbiter of peace in the Middle East by co-founding the West-Eastern Divan Orchestra, bringing together Israeli and Palestinian musicians. Critics were divided however on Barenboim as a writer.

Andrew Clark in the Financial Times sums up Barenboim's manifesto: "Barenboim believes the instruments of an orchestra, like the keys of a piano, are a template for the way conflicting voices in the world can be harmonised.” He adds: “few writers have summed up as concisely or intelligently the fundamentals of classical music—the interdependence of harmony, rhythm, volume and speed—or applied them so persuasively to the most intractable political issue of the postmodern world."

The Sunday Times' Bryan Appleyard writes that "[Barenboim] describes brilliantly the way music works and the way in which its intricacies and logic justify his faith that everything is connected"—however he suggests that "his cultural history can be a bit dodgy . . . and the political-musical parallels are pretty stretched".

Ed Smith, writing in the Sunday Telegraph agrees, finding that "the further Barenboim strays from music, the less secure his writing becomes” and that "[he] has a penchant for aphoristic expressions that hover between the profound and the obvious". Susan Tomes in the Guardian admits that "some of the chapters are insubstantial or repetitive" but that the book is a "rare opportunity to hear how a master musician thinks". She quotes Barenboim to summarise: "'I am not a political person . . . humanity has always concerned me. In that sense I feel able and, as an artist, especially qualified to analyse the situation.'"

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