Israel Philharmonic in Prague
Recently, I was fortunate to hear the Israel Philharmonic play in Prague. I had a planned trip to Prague, and a few days before leaving, I had found out fortuitously that the ensemble would be performing a concert in the city as part of their European tour. I promptly obtained a ticket.
The Israel Philharmonic and its conductor, Lahav Shani, have been in the news lately. In September, a performance of the Munich Philharmonic with Shani at its helm was cancelled in Gent, Belgium, because the organizers were “unable to provide sufficient clarity about Shani’s attitude to the genocidal regime in Tel Aviv.” In October, the Israel Philharmonic concert attendees were faced with demonstrators at Carnegie Hall in Midtown Manhattan. The picketers held placards with messages that read “iPhil, every note you play is stolen,” and “iPhil: absolutely political, criminally Zionist,” among others. In November, anti-Israel protesters lit flares and shouted slogans inside the hall amid an Israel Philharmonic performance in Paris. The orchestra temporarily cleared the podium but came back and finished the concert to the ovation from the audience.
Yet the Israelis continued with their tour undeterred. When I walked to the concert hall from my hotel in the romantically lit cobblestoned streets of nighttime Prague, I wondered what awaited the musicians and the concertgoers tonight. Will there be hostile crowds in front of the venue? Will people have to fight their way to the entrance of the building through a gauntlet of keffiyeh-clad, Palestinian flag-waving, free, free Palestine-yelling individuals whom the outnumbered police contingent would be barely able to contain? And if there were no genocide-screaming fools outside, would there be surprises during the performance? I didn’t think about any of this with fear or even apprehension, but I anticipated it.
I arrived at the concert site 40 minutes early to account for possible delays. There were no uniformed police in front of the building. There were no Palestinian flags or keffiyehs either. People dressed in their formal best, as is common for Czech classical music aficionados at a concert, gradually filled the hall. Almost all seats were occupied. The orchestra played Beethoven’s Piano Concerto No.5 with Yefim Bronfman as the soloist. His virtuoso performance was not surprising. But the true treat came after the intermission, in the form of Tchaikovsky’s Symphony No.5. The dynamic piece, replete with peaks and valleys of melodic tension, exploded on the dais in the skillful hands of the Israeli musicians and their young conductor. The applause was thunderous. The Czechs are a music-loving nation, and they like to clap, in part to extract an encore from the performer. But contrary to American audiences, they are much more parsimonious with standing ovations. Here, too, people continued to clap while sitting. Then, during the third or fourth round of applause, one person stood, then a second one, and another one shortly after that. And then suddenly, most of the hall was standing and shouting bravo.
A lot went through my head while I watched and listened to the Israelis play. That the Jews, all the adversity they’ve been exposed to notwithstanding, continue to be givers, builders, contributors, not destroyers. That as part of the disgusting racial laws instituted by Nazi Germany, Jews were first restricted and eventually forbidden to publicly perform as musicians and that now descendants of those Jews are among those who form the national orchestra of the Jewish state, a musical body widely acknowledged as one of the best in the world.
And what of the lack of protests at the venue? The Czechs have had a reputation of historically supporting Israel, and of philosemitism. As someone who grew up in that country, I don’t believe this reputation is entirely deserved. There is no dearth of antisemites among the Czechs, and their support of Israel has begun to wane as of late, even though it remains higher than in most other countries. Perhaps a level of antisemitism that is still not rampant, combined with only minor influx of hardcore Israel-haters from abroad, has prevented nonsensical harassment at Israeli or Jewish apolitical events from occurring. At least for now.
I watched the artists hugging each other on the stage, happy with their performance and undoubtedly relieved that it had concluded without incident. The haters, with their fatuous slogans and their violence, are wasting their effort. We are a nation of creators, givers and doers. We will continue.
