Daniel Barenboim Essentials

In the autumn of 2022, Daniel Barenboim celebrates his 80th birthday. It’s the perfect excuse to look back over one of the most remarkable musical careers of this past century. His “multiple identities” (as the filmmaker Paul Smaczny suitably titled his acclaimed documentary about Barenboim) have found him in the roles of pianist, conductor and chamber musician. Not least, he is also a humanitarian—almost a type of cultural statesman—who has addressed through his musical actions some of the burning issues of our times. He has grown to be an international colossus, an artist who takes a lead—and a stand, too—wherever he goes. Born in Buenos Aires in 1942 to a musical family of Russian Jewish immigrants, Barenboim was a child prodigy, making his first recordings at age 12 in London’s Wigmore Hall. He went on to make a vast range of repertoire his own, from Bach’s Goldberg Variations to Wagner’s 10 major operas, and from Beethoven and Mozart to Pierre Boulez and his successors. His sharply articulated philosophical writings on music are among the most inspiring books of their type. And his collaboration with the Palestinian scholar Edward Said led to the founding of their West-Eastern Divan Orchestra, in which young Israeli and Arab musicians collaborate, working together towards a shared goal. This idealistic principle also lay at the heart of the Barenboim-Said Akademie, opened in Berlin in 2016. Barenboim appeared in the opening ceremony of the London 2012 Olympic Games, one of four great humanitarians tasked with carrying the corners of the Olympic flag. Although health issues are now forcing him to step down from the concert platform, he remains not only a towering musical presence, but much more besides. Here’s a brief guide to the three principal areas of Daniel Barenboim’s musical life. Barenboim the Conductor When Barenboim was 11, a visit to Igor Markevitch’s conducting masterclass in Salzburg brought him to the attention of the conductor Wilhelm Furtwängler, who declared him a phenomenon. Barenboim developed his conducting career alongside his activities as solo pianist, famously directing the complete Mozart piano concertos from the keyboard with the English Chamber Orchestra in the 1960s. He later served as music director at the Orchestre de Paris from 1975 to 1989 and the Chicago Symphony Orchestra from 1991 until 2006. Most recently, he was named Conductor for Life at the Berlin Staatsoper and its orchestra, the Staatskapelle, having been its chief conductor since 1992. Meanwhile, his extensive work with the West-Eastern Divan Orchestra on tours and recordings has shown how sensitively attuned this orchestra is to his musical aims. When he first encountered the Berlin Staatskapelle, he was struck by how similar their sound was to that of orchestras trained in the pre-war German traditions of Furtwängler and Bruno Walter. Barenboim is, in many ways, heir to that tradition, often favouring a deeply thought structural approach to the score, with long-lined phrasing and intense beauty of tone. Among his numerous recordings with the Staatskapelle are Elgar’s symphonies and Cello Concerto with the soloist Alisa Weilerstein—the first time Barenboim had returned to the concerto since the death of his first wife, the cellist Jacqueline du Pré, in 1987. Barenboim the Pianist Barenboim’s phenomenal capacity for absorbing and memorising music has provided him with a vast repertoire at the piano. The Viennese classics, especially Mozart, Beethoven and Brahms, have remained its classical core, along with Chopin, Mendelssohn and Debussy, yet he is equally acclaimed for his performances of Bach and works from the 20th century, including Messiaen, Berio and Piazzolla. While his father was his only regular teacher, he was also influenced by such artists as Edwin Fischer and Arthur Rubinstein, to whom he played when he was 12. Barenboim’s direct approach, allowing the composer’s musical message to shine out unhindered by undue flamboyance or fussiness, has remained undimmed. His incandescent Beethoven cycles have been particular landmarks—he has recorded the 32 sonatas three times, the first in his twenties; audiences have flocked to his concert series of those and the Schubert sonatas, in which his exceptional ability to evoke orchestral sonorities at the instrument have helped to make his interpretations unforgettable. Barenboim the Chamber Musician Back in the 1960s and 1970s, Barenboim’s partnerships with such musicians as Pinchas Zukerman, Itzhak Perlman, Vladimir Ashkenazy, Zubin Mehta and Jacqueline du Pré produced incomparably joyous performances. Some were fortuitously preserved on film by Christopher Nupen—notably Schubert’s Trout Quintet; Barenboim also recorded cello sonatas by Franck and Brahms with du Pré and the Beethoven piano trios with her and Zukerman. His frequent chamber music partners more recently have included the violinist Maxim Vengerov, the cellist Kian Soltani and Barenboim’s violinist son, Michael Barenboim; he has also tackled a wide range of chamber works with members of the orchestras he conducts. Chamber music extends, moreover, to works for two pianos or piano duet, and here Barenboim’s collaborations with his compatriot Martha Argerich in repertoire including Mozart’s Sonata for Two Pianos and Stravinsky’s The Rite of Spring have notably brought the house down.