LUCERNE, Switzerland — “It has been a success in a small way,” the conductor and pianist Daniel Barenboim said in an interview at his hotel here on Monday. The question had been whether he was ready to pronounce the experiment that is the West-Eastern Divan Orchestra a success.

As with anything even touching on Middle Eastern politics, Mr. Barenboim was undoubtedly wise to guard his optimism. The orchestra was founded in 1999 by the Argentine-Israeli Mr. Barenboim and the Palestinian-American literary theorist, scholar and critic Edward Said, who died in 2003, “as a workshop for Israeli, Palestinian and other Arab musicians,” in the words of its website.

Musically, the orchestra must be considered an unqualified success, as it showed clearly on Sunday and Monday in evening concerts under Mr. Barenboim at the KKL Concert Hall, early highlights of the Lucerne Festival. But, as its makeup implies, its goals reach well beyond music, ranging from international understanding to interpersonal relationships. And by touring with a major work of Wagner — the second act of “Tristan und Isolde” in Lucerne, with the Prelude and “Liebestod” to be added at the Salzburg Festival — and at a time of warfare between Israel and Palestinians in Gaza, the orchestra adds elements of intrigue.

The Wagner issue turns out to be no big deal, even though the composer’s music, some of which was played as the Nazis were transporting Jews to extermination camps in the Europe of the 1940s, remains taboo (Mr. Barenboim’s word) in Israel. It is avoided out of sensitivity to the feelings of Holocaust survivors and their families.