The Choir That Shouldn't Have Sung Together

In December 1989, as the Berlin Wall crumbled, conductor Daniel Barenboim gathered musicians from East and West Berlin to perform Beethoven's Ninth Symphony. For twenty-eight years, these artists had lived under separate flags, educated in rival conservatories, and taught to regard one another with suspicion. Some had lost family members to the wall's brutal divide. Yet there they stood, shoulder to shoulder, bows lifted over the same score.…