Music is my life, the violin my wife: Mostafa Saad interview

The violin prodigy hailed by Nigel Kennedy as “a name for the future” is rehearsing in cut-offs and trainers in a sweltering concert hall in the Israeli-occupied West Bank. Despite dodgy air conditioning, Mostafa Saad, who turns 16 next month, shares the high spirits of the 70-strong Palestine Youth Orchestra, which had a standing ovation in Bethlehem the night before. Rehearsing Wagner and Dvorak, he cheekily breaks into a lilting Arab solo that makes the band laugh.

He has reasons to be cheerful. Along with his gifted brothers Omar, 17, a viola player, and Ghandi, 13, another violinist, he was seen by millions when Britain’s Kennedy invited them and others from the Palestine Strings to play Vivaldi’s Four Seasons in their Prom debut last month. The concert was broadcast live on Radio 3 and televised on BBC Four. For many reviewers, the brothers’ improvised Arab solos, and Ghandi’s soulful singing, were the high point, along with an astounding encore, when Kennedy played the slow movement of Vivaldi’s A-minor double violin concerto with the 15-year-old, who learned the piece in a few days. “It was an amazing opportunity. He’s an incredible musician and human being,” says Mostafa.

He returns with Kennedy and the BBC Concert Orchestra in Hyde Park for tomorrow’s Proms in the Park, playing Kennedy’s Melody in the Wind.

I meet the brothers at summer camp for the Edward Said National Conservatory of Music — Palestine’s biggest conservatoire, founded 20 years ago. Young Palestinian musicians from the occupied West Bank and Gaza, annexed East Jerusalem, Israel before the 1967 occupation, and abroad — who are normally kept apart by a military regime of different coloured ID cards, permits and checkpoints —  come here to play together.

Mostafa, who started the violin aged seven, then the oud (oriental lute), first played with Kennedy in East Jerusalem last year, after he spotted the Palestine Strings on YouTube. “Music is my life, and the violin is my wife,” says Mostafa, listing his passions as “girls, music, cars, food and sleeping”.

Omar, 18 in November and bearded, has a contrasting gravity. His Prom solo was the easy part, he says softly. “When Mostafa played and Ghandi sang, my heart was beating fast.” That closeness embraces their sister Tibah, 14, a cellist who completes their Galilee Quartet. Palestinian Israelis from Meghar village near Nazareth, all four play in the PYO.

Their father “studied in Russia, and it was his dream that his children would be musicians,” says Mostafa, whose violin teacher steered them to the conservatoire, where they scooped all-Palestine music competitions. “No one remembers what I played, but that I was the little kid in the white suit.”

They see themselves as Palestinians (who make up a fifth of Israel’s population) but belong to Israel's Druze religious minority. As such they face conscripted national service in the Israeli Defence Force. Last year Omar’s Facebook letter to the prime minister Binyamin Netanyahu, explaining why he was a conscientious objector, went viral. His only weapon was music, he wrote, and “I … will not be the fuel to the fire of your war”.

The orchestras are key to his refusal, he tells me. “I can’t imagine myself playing music with my friends, and the next day, with the IDF [Israel Defence Forces] at the checkpoint, humiliating them. This is my second family. I can’t replace my instrument with an assault rifle that can kill my own brother, or any other human being.”

“Why should I act insane just to have a normal life?” Omar says. His conscription date is next March, when he faces jail, which also harms his chances of university. “The period is unknown. It’s as they like. If I can’t play for six months, my music career is in danger. I’m ready to sacrifice it, just to hope to make a change.” In his mind are his younger brothers, whom he doesn’t want to pay the same price. “I can’t imagine them inside prison,” he murmurs, “It’s too hard.”

Omar, a gentle stoic who believes “some people are meant to make sacrifices”, lives partly through Mostafa’s dream come true of being a soloist in a professional orchestra. “I’m so proud of him,” he says.

Proms in the Park is in Hyde Park, W2, 5.15pm-10.30pm (also live at bbc.co.uk/proms), with a big-screen link-up with Last Night of the Proms from 7.30pm in the Albert Hall, SW7.