"One cannot say, 'I hate Wagner because Hitler loved Wagner,'" Barenboim suggests "This is simply not so. The Nazis used and abused him, creating a myth that Wagner was the forerunner of Nazi ideology. But this has very little to do with Wagner himself and a lot to do with the Nazis, in the sense that they took some of his writings, and not only his anti-Semitic writings. Wagner was a great German nationalist, and this is what they were looking for. After the Germans lost the First World War, they found in Wagner the quality they needed to help rebuild the nation. The supremacy of the German race or the supremacy of German music and art - I don't think that was even in Wagner's mind."Wagner's music is not officially banned in Israel, but it goes unplayed in concert halls there through a forceful emotional taboo.

In 2001, Barenboim and his orchestra, the Berlin Staatskapelle, scheduled a performance of Die Walk?at the Israel Festival. The issue went to parliament and the Knesset decided it should be cancelled. The orchestra played Schumann and Stravinsky instead, but after the encore Barenboim addressed the hall directly, asking: "As a musician, I would like to ask my audience: do you want to hear some Wagner? If not, no problem If you do, we have the music. And if you are angry, please be angry with me, not the orchestra and not the festival."A 45-minute debate ensued Some audience members were outraged, vociferously so But about 90 per cent of the audience were in favour.

Some 50 people left the hall, and once things quietened down, Barenboim and the orchestra played the "Prelude and Liebestod" from Tristan. The furore in the days afterwards appeared to have been started by people who were not actually at the concert.Ironically, many of Wagner's strongest advocates were Jewish, notably the conductor Hermann Levi, the son of a rabbi, who took the podium for the first performance of Parsifal. Even Theodor Herzl, the founder of Zionism, was inspired by Wagner, especially Tannh?er. But no Wagner has been played in Israel since Barenboim's concert.These arguments will probably never go away. The scars of the Second World War are ineradicable; and those to whom the very idea of going to a Wagner opera is anathema are unlikely ever to be converted by the music alone.