Argentine-Israeli conductor Daniel Barenboim will receive the Konrad Adenauer Prize from Cologne (West Germany), in recognition of the musician's commitment to peace.

"Daniel Barenboim has found in music a binding element that unites people from different cultures," said the city's mayor, Henriette Reker, announcing the award.

The award, which is given every two years and thus reaches its ninth edition, recognises the work done at the West-Eastern Divan, the orchestra made up of young Israelis and Arabs, which was founded in 1999 by the musician together with the late Palestinian intellectual Edward Said.

The result has been a success both from a musical point of view and for its symbolism and conciliatory message, according to the argument of the board of trustees that awards the prize.

The artist launched last July in Buenos Aires the fifth edition of the Barenboim Festival, which under the two axes "Music and Reflection" hosted the presence of the West-Eastern Divan for its 20 years of life because, he explained then.

The award will be presented on October 19 in Cologne, the city where Adenauer was mayor - between 1917 and 1933 and, again, after the defeat of Nazism in 1945.

From that position he became the first chancellor of the Federal Republic of Germany in 1949, a position he held until 1963.

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