Daniel Barenboim
Daniel Barenboim
Daniel Barenboim, KBEis a pianist and conductor who is a citizen of Argentina, Israel, Palestine and Spain. He is general music director of the Berlin State Opera, and the Staatskapelle Berlin; he previously served as Music Director of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, the Orchestre de Paris and La Scala in Milan. Barenboim is known for his work with the West–Eastern Divan Orchestra, a Seville-based orchestra of young Arab and Israeli musicians, and as a resolute critic of the Israeli occupation...
NationalityArgentinian
ProfessionPianist
Date of Birth15 November 1942
CityBuenos Aires, Argentina
I think there were people in the press who knew the truth, but who regarded Jackie as a national treasure - quite rightly - and didn't want to cause her any distress.
I hope that my new status will be an example of Israeli-Palestinian co-existence, I believe that the destinies of the Israeli people and the Palestinian people are inextricably linked.
There are probably many people in Israel who believe that Wagner, who died in 1883, lived in Berlin in 1942 and was friends with Hitler.
I have the greatest respect for the survivors of the Holocaust. We can't even imagine what these people went through.
Music means different things to different people and sometimes even different things to the same person at different moments of his life.
Today, conducting is a question of ego: a lot of people believe they are actually playing the music.
It is always interesting and sometimes even important to have intimate knowledge of a composer's life, but it is not essential in order to understand the composer's works.
In my mother's belly, I remember not liking the tempi my father played the Beethoven Sonatas in.
I have music in my brain all the time, all sorts.
Beethoven was a deeply political man in the broadest sense of the word. He was not interested in daily politics, but concerned with questions of moral behaviour and the larger questions of right and wrong affecting the entire society.
Once you start playing a piece, there is a connection between every note. You cannot say, 'I will not concentrate on this note.' You cannot ignore things the way you do in the rest of your life.
I maintain music is not here to make us forget about life. It's also here to teach us about life: the fact that everything starts and ends, the fact that every sound is in danger of disappearing, the fact that everything is connected - the fact that we live and we die.
I liked very much when we lived in Hampstead. We would go for walks on the Heath. I liked it better than living in the centre of town.
Beethoven's music tends to move from chaos to order, as if order were an imperative of human existence.