Mad About Music
Ehud Barak
Sunday, March 06, 2005
Ehud Barak, former Israeli Prime Minister (and now running again), tells host Gilbert Kaplan why his favorite composers are Bach, Mahler and Beethoven. Another favorite, Frank Sinatra's “My Way," for reasons that don’t “need even an explanation.” An accomplished pianist who practiced Chopin before meeting Yasir Arafat, his intensive late night playing once caused a neighbor to send the police to the Prime Minister’s door.
Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy Lieder ohne Worte [ Songs without Words ]. Opus 30, No . 3 in E major. "Consolation". Daniel Barenboim, piano. Deutsche Grammophon 5263727.
Peter Tchaikovsky Concerto for Violin and Orchestra in D major, Op. 35 . Second Movement. Philadelphia Orchestra; Eugene Ormandy; Isaac Stern, violin. SONY SMK 66 829.
Ludwig van Beethoven Sonata No. 23, Op. 57 in F minor "Appassionata." Third Movement. Murray Perahia, piano. CBS Records / Masterworks MK39344.
Scott Joplin Piano Rags . "The Entertainer." Joshua Rifkin, Piano. Elektra / Nonesuch 9 79159-2.
Johann Sebastian Bach/Charles Gounod Lyrics: Noa "Ave Maria." From NOA. Achinoam Nini (aka Noa). Geffen GEFD-24619.
Gustav Mahler Symphony No. 8 in E flat major "Symphony of a Thousand". "Chorus Mysticus." Chicago Symphony Orchestra; Sir Georg Solti; Vienna Boys' Choir; Vienna State Opera Chorus; Vienna Singverein; Heather Harper, Lucia Popp & Arleen Auger, sopranos; Yvonne Minton & Helen Watts, contraltos; René Kollo, tenor; John Shirley-Quirk, baritone; Martti Talvela, bass. Musical Heritage Society 514500W.
P. Anka, C. François, J. Revaux, G. Thibault "My Way" from Sinatra Reprise: The Very Good Years. Frank Sinatra. Reprise Records 9-26501-2.
Kaplan Good evening and welcome back to “Mad About Music” as we continue to revisit shows of guests who are back in the news. Tonight, former Prime Minister of Israel Ehud Barak, who recently announced his intention to run for office again.
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Kaplan He is Israel 's most decorated soldier. As Prime Minister he was known for his bold initiatives to create a breakthrough in the peace process with the Palestinians. Through all the turmoil, Ehud Barak was always accompanied by music. In fact, when he ran for office last time, one of his campaign pledges was to restore the piano at the Prime Minister's residence. Ehud Barak, welcome to “Mad About Music.”
Barak Thank you.
Kaplan Let's start with how music entered your life. You grew up on a communal farm, a kibbutz. Your brother reported the kids were afraid to play soccer with you because you often missed the ball and kicked them because your heart really was in your piano lessons.
Barak In fact I was a very introvert, small-sized kid that could not excel either in basketball or in soccer. But I loved music from a very early age and I was encouraged to play the piano. There was only one old grand piano in the kibbutz and it was in the communal dining room and I was playing almost every Friday evening "Songs without Words" of Mendelssohn, a very short piece called "Consolation". To this moment, whenever I hear this piece, it reminds me of my early days as a bar mitzvah boy in a small communal farm physically frightened by the eyes and the ears of the whole kibbutz.
[Music]
Kaplan Mendelssohn's "Consolation" from Songs without Words . Daniel Barenboim at the piano. A selection of my guest former Prime Minister of Israel Ehud Barak. Now everyone has known about your passion for music in Israel and some say it was actually a crucial element in carrying a large voting block of recent Russian immigrants. I recall a joke at the time: "How can you tell if a newly-arrived Russian in Israel doesn't play the piano. Because he's carrying a violin." Do you have a special interest in Russian music?
Barak Yes, I loved the Russian music from very, very early childhood and was specially attracted to Rachmaninov and Scriabin and the Preludes, which carried with them sort of kind of harmonies that seemed to me when I met them first from another world, coming from another world. But the first Russian music that I remember as a young child was Tchaikovsky, Violin Concerto . And especially the Second Movement. My father made the acquaintance between us. We didn't have even a gramophone in the kibbutz at the time so he used to whistle the music. He told me this story about his relationship to this Second Movement. He was an orphan before World War I and during the war, traveled with his brother and grandmother all over Russia from Lithuania to the Crimea and in the train, when it used to stop – it was a travel of several weeks – there was a young man that carried with him a violin and used to cry his soul out with this unique melody of the second movement of Tchaikovsky's Violin Concerto . I fell in love with this.
[Music]
Kaplan The Second Movement from Tchaikovsky's Violin Concerto . The Philadelphia Orchestra under the baton of Eugene Ormandy with soloist Isaac Stern, an early memory of my guest today, former Prime Minister of Israel, Ehud Barak. Now, listening to that Tchaikovsky, I'm struck that the opening notes bear an unmistakable resemblance to your national anthem, Hatikvah . Has that ever struck you?
Barak Yes, it struck me in spite of the fact that we in Israel used to say, or usually say, that the other piece that resembles our national anthem even more was the, is Smetana's Moldau at the beginning.
Kaplan Well, family and music have been important to you in many ways. Did you have parents that encouraged you?
Barak My father was clearly the real engine behind my awareness of the beauty and sensation of listening or performing in music. He was the one that always escorted me to every, almost every training session on the piano and more than any other individual, was encouraging me to try never to be deterred by either technical or other obstacles in playing the piano. He passed away several months ago at the age of 92. But I believe that one of the most moving moments for him was when he was already lying in his dying bed. I remember that all along my life he tried to encourage me to play the "Appassionata." And I thought that I will never be able to perform the "Appassionata" just by listening to it and he insisted that I try. And in fact it happened that I tried in the last year and found it possible after all. I played it to him through the telephone. He could hardly talk, and when I ended he told me, "I told you all along your life, never be deterred from experiencing more in music."
[Music]
Kaplan The Third Movement of Beethoven's "Appassionata" Sonata , Murray Perahia at the piano, a selection of former Prime Minister of Israel Ehud Barak when he appeared earlier on “Mad About Music.” When we return, we'll be discussing some major moments in Ehud Barak's life in which music played a prominent role.
[Station break]
Kaplan This is Gilbert Kaplan and we are revisiting our show with former Prime Minister of Israel Ehud Barak. Let's talk about music and your military career. Once, as a leader of an elite commando unit, I understand you dressed up as a woman, didn't you, and with your team assassinated three of those who had participated in killing the Israeli athletes at the Munich Olympics. Then came the famous raid on Entebbe to free hostages. Now in those moments leading up to those attacks, did you ever turn to music?
Barak No, in the first case, clearly no. In the other, in fact, I did not ultimately lead the operation – I was supposed to lead the inner group that had to rescue the hostages but in the last 36 hours before the operation I was taken out of this group and sent to Nairobi, to Kenya, to prepare some of the re-fueling and intelligence operations that had to do with the successful completion of the Entebbe operation. But I had to spend all the time basically hidden in the residence of our Mossad delegate, or representative to Nairobi, and it was there that I sat down with this family, nothing to do; and his wife was playing the piano and she played in a very aggressive and attractive way "The Entertainer" of Joplin. I of course knew the music from the movie, "The Sting." But I never heard it on the piano in real life, and she did it so well and so many times in a period of high intensity, awareness for everything that happened that resulted from the need to be on high alert for the preparation of the Entebbe raid, that it was imprinted on my mind, this 24 hours, and I made a point when we came back home, I made a point of beginning, trying to play it.
[Music]
Kaplan Scott Joplin, "The Entertainer". Joshua Rifkin at the piano. A selection of my guest today on “Mad About Music,” Ehud Barak. Now as Prime Minister of course you visited many heads of state and often received them. Sometimes musical events must have accompanied these occasions. Where there any significant ones you can recall?
Barak I can recall several of them. Most of the world leaders that I met knew about my love affair with music and took a note of it. I still remember a moving evening in Berlin when I was hosted by Chancellor Schröder, a good friend and at the end of it he gave me two books with the facsimile of The Well Tempered Clavier by Bach with several pages from the original with original handwriting of Bach on them.
Kaplan Did you ever have any music enter into your negotiations with Arafat?
Barak Not into negotiation, I stopped the music at the right moment, in fact I met Arafat for the first time in my life when I was a foreign minister in the government of Shimon Peres after the assignation of Rabin. We met at Barcelona in a Euro-Mediterranean gathering of leaders. Out of security considerations, they sent myself and Arafat in different convoys, ahead of all the other leaders, into a royal palace when the reception by the King had to take place. So I came, I had to wait some half an hour for, I looked around and I saw a very lovely brown grand piano. So I sat down, I ordered my security guy to be close enough to the door to avoid surprises and I played the Military Polonaise of Chopin. In the middle of it he, the security man, noted to me, "Arafat is coming". I didn't know that they are preparing it and I found myself stopping it immediately, closing the piano and running to the entrance and this was my first meeting with Arafat.
Kaplan And obviously not the last, of course, because you ran for Prime Minister; and is it really true that one of your campaign pledges was to fix the piano at the Prime Minister's residence?
Barak When I ended my role after some 36 years in uniform as the Commander in Chief of our armed forces, and then Prime Minister and Minister of Defense, Yitzhak Rabin made a small size reception in his residence in Jerusalem for some 50 or 60 people and there was a good grand Steinway at the Prime Minister's residence, but very old one and no one almost ever touched it so it was not, not fully tuned. Rabin asked me, in fact Leah Rabin, his wife, asked me to play something, so I played the First Prelude of Bach and some lady was ready to sing the Gounod "Ave Maria." Later on, when I was running to be Prime Minister, I was usually asked by interviewers on the TV and on the radio why is it important to you to run for the Prime Minister's office; and so you cannot answer it very seriously, so I used always to tell them that you know, I was there once, I found there is a good piano, a good Steinway there, it is not tuned, I want to be able to order that it will be perfectly tuned.
Kaplan All right, now you mentioned "Ave Maria" at the Prime Minister's residence. I see it's on your list today. Is that the reason you selected it?
Barak No, I selected it for several reasons. First of all, it's of course one of my first experiences in playing Bach, was to play the First Prelude of The Well Tempered Clavier . But later on, you know, when I was already a Prime Minister, the Pope, John Paul II, visited Israel, a moving visit, they took him to Yad Vashem, the Holocaust Memorial and to some other places all around the country. Several months afterwards he had the millennium celebration, Second Millennium celebration in Rome, and he asked to perform "Ave Maria" and out of all artists on earth he took an Israeli, single woman of a Yemenite origin to perform Gounod's "Ave Maria". It left an imprint on myself and I would love to hear Achinoam Nini performing the "Ave Maria".
[Music]
Kaplan Gounod's "Ave Maria", sung by Noa, an Israeli singer and a favorite of former Prime Minister of Israel, Ehud Barak. When we return, we'll explore Ehud Barak's first encounter with the music of Mahler.
[Station break]
Kaplan This is Gilbert Kaplan and we are revisiting our earlier show with former Prime Minister of Israel Ehud Barak who recently announced he is running for that office again. There may not be a choral tradition in Israel, but for your next selection you've chosen perhaps the most massive choral work ever written – Mahler's Eighth Symphony, called a “Symphony of a Thousand” because it was performed initially with one thousand musicians, perhaps 800 of whom were in the chorus. Has Mahler always been a favorite of yours?
Barak No, until the age of 40, I could hardly listen to Mahler. I heard it incidentally, and I just couldn't find a contact with it. But it happened to me around the age of 40 that I heard the Fourth Symphony and fell in love with it and then someone brought to me the Fifth Symphony Now the Eighth Symphony was the last one that I found and I was astonished. I could not stop listening. It's a kind of culmination of, of beauty and depth. Music is a form of art that penetrates you directly in a way that could not be reached by either sculpture or painting, in my feeling, or even within a classical novel and I fell in love with the Eighth Symphony to an extent that at a certain point I said that one of my projects as a Prime Minister would be to support – you know it costs a lot of money to put it on stage, the Eighth Symphony – that I will find some resources from the government to help the Philharmonic Orchestra to perform Mahler's Eighth. But unfortunately my term as the Prime Minister was cut by the intensity of an event, the Camp David and the intifada, and I couldn't complete it. So maybe the next time, if I ever come back to politics, a new reason to go there would be to be able to live up to my old promise to bring the Eighth Symphony of Mahler to the stage. I choose the last, the very last five minutes – the "Chorus Mysticus" – since I still to this moment remember the shiver through my spine when I listened to it for the first time. Feminine, souls, heavenly souls accompanying the soul of Faust to heaven.
[Music]
Kaplan The "Chorus Mysticus" from the final moments of Gustav Mahler's Symphony No. 8 , often called "Symphony of a Thousand". The Chicago Symphony Orchestra under the baton of Sir Georg Solti, a selection of my guest former Prime Minister of Israel Ehud Barak on today's edition of “Mad About Music.” Now Mahler embraces the philosophy of Goethe, always striving. Your final selection today embraces a different philosophy, as sung by Frank Sinatra in his ballad, "My Way." I suppose I can guess why you like those words.
Barak Yes, I think that it doesn't need even an explanation. Just listen focused to the words. I believe it's the motto of any autonomous independent free-minded human being that experiences this great journey of life.
[Music]
Kaplan "My Way", the classic sung by Frank Sinatra and a special favorite of my guest today on “Mad About Music,” the former Prime Minister of Israel Ehud Barak. Well, as we close, I would like to ask you that now that, at least for the time being shall we say, you're out of government, do you find more time to play the piano? And if so, what are you playing lately?
Barak Yes, in fact I was playing even as a Prime Minister once I reached this place. I used to play with this old Steinway that I already talked about, but it happened that usually my playing time was between 1 o'clock and 2:30 o'clock AM and it was harassment for one of the neighbors – there was a lady in the neighboring house that used to call the police to stop the Prime Minister from interrupting her night sleep whenever I left the door slightly open; but you know of course, as Prime Minister I could not play a lot and now I'm playing a little bit more.
Kaplan What are you playing?
Barak I'm trying to be able to play my favorite Beethoven Sonatas , the "Pathetique" and the "Moonlight", the "Tempest" No. 17 and the "Appassionata" and I tried to go into some more complicated Polonaises , the ones that I already played, and I'm trying to begin with some Preludes of Rachmaninov that I adore, I adored all along my life.
Kaplan Well, on that note, I thanked Ehud Barak for his appearance and for proving once again that in the race for achievement, for power, leadership, one can still embrace the nurturing power of music. Which is what we'll continue to do when “Mad About Music” returns on Sunday, April 3 rd , at our usual time, 9 PM, when we will revisit another show with a guest in the news, Alan Alda, who recently won his first nomination for an Academy Award for his performance in “The Aviator.”
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A leader of his country in both war and peace, Ehud Barak served until recently as Israel's 10th Prime Minister.
During his tenure, Prime Minister Barak lead Israel out of prolonged recession into an economic boom, with 5.9% annual growth, record foreign investments, near zero inflation, a halved deficit and significantly decreased external debt.
The core of the Barak government's effort was devoted to the peace process: in May 2000 Prime Minister Barak ordered the withdrawal of the Israeli Defense Forces from South Lebanon, ending 18 tragic and bloody years of Israel's presence there. He led far-reaching efforts to negotiate peace agreements, first with Syria and later with the Palestinian authority, with the active participation of President Bill Clinton and his administration. Regrettably, these negotiations did not result in the breakthroughs necessary to conclude final agreements.
Before being elected Prime Minister, Barak completed an illustrious 36-year career in the Israeli Defense Forces as the most decorated soldier in its history.
Ehud Barak was a key architect of the June 1976 Entebbe Operation for the rescue of passengers on the Air France aircraft hijacked by terrorists and forced to land at the Entebbe Airport in Uganda.
Additionally, he served as Chief of the General Staff of the IDF where he was involved in the negotiation and implementation of the 1994 Peace Treaty with Jordan – an especially meaningful event for Barak in light of his warm relationship with King Hussein.
Mr. Barak additionally served his country as Minister of the Interior, Minister of Foreign Affairs and Defense Minister.
Mr. Barak received his B.S. in Mathematics and Physics from the Hebrew University in Jerusalem and his M.SC in Economic Engineering Systems at Stanford University in California.
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