A Maestro Unafraid of a Storm
This article originally appeared in Toronto’s Globe and Mail newspaper, on November 28, 2002.
On a fall day in New York, pianist, conductor and controversy-magnet Daniel Barenboim holds court in a discreet Upper East Side hotel. The evening before, his Chicago Symphony Orchestra practically blew the doors off Carnegie Hall with a brassy rendition of Anton Bruckner’s Symphony No. 9 – yet the following morning finds him relaxed and soft spoken, as he casually lights up a Cuban cigar. These are, of course, illegal in the United States, but Barenboim does not always play by the rules.
In an era that tends to demand specialization from classical musicians, he maintains a dual career as a concert pianist and as the director of two major musical institutions: the CSO and Berlin’s Staatsoper. How does he balance these demands? “I don’t,” he replies with a smile. “What I try to do now is to have periods where I exclusively play, and other times when I exclusively conduct. It’s more difficult to go back and forth all the time, physically.”
Barenboim has always been ambitious – he once expressed the desire to conduct in London, New York and Los Angeles all in the same day. His solo piano recital tomorrow at Toronto’s Roy Thomson Hall comes two weeks after his 60th birthday, but the silver-haired maestro shows no sign of slowing down.
He made his debut in his native Buenos Aires 53 years ago at the age of seven. Three years later, his family moved to Israel and the Wunderkind proceeded to take Europe by storm, with recitals in Rome, Vienna, Paris and London. The distinguished German conductor Wilhelm Furtwängler called the boy “a phenomenon,” and at the age of 12 he recorded all of Mozart’s piano sonatas. He had his first taste of conducting in 1962, and in 1975 he succeeded Sir Georg Solti as music director of the Orchestre de Paris.
As impressive as all this sounds, for Barenboim it is not enough. He seems discontent with the thought of his music simply existing in the world – he wants it to have some kind of effect. And so he does remarkable things.
In September, he defied the Israeli government and gave a music class in the West Bank town of Ramallah, for Palestinian students. “For the two hours that I spent with the kids in the school, I reduced the level of hatred completely,” he says, warming to the subject. “For many of them it was the first time they thought something positive about anything from Israel. For me it was personally very satisfying, to be able to work with these children. Many of them may be the same ones who are throwing stones at Israeli tanks; maybe they are from the families of the suicide bombers. I have no idea – but for two hours they listened to music and played.”
This act was, to say the least, controversial in Israel. The Jerusalem Post sarcastically asked, “with friends like Barenboim, who needs enemies?” – and accused him of advocating a return to “the failed policy of concession and withdrawal.”
A few days later, he and his wife were set upon in a Jerusalem restaurant. “Two of these fanatics started insulting me and calling me a traitor, and said that I was Arafat’s friend – and that they would cut my tongue and break my hands,” he recalls. “But my wife didn’t understand, because she doesn’t speak Hebrew. She just saw the hatred in their eyes, took the salad bowl and threw it in their faces!” Barenboim makes light of the incident, but he well knows that in Israel broccoli can escalate to bullets: he has received death-threats by telephone.
The Ramallah excursion was not an isolated event – Barenboim has been shaking things up for several years. For the last four summers he and Palestinian scholar Edward Said have run a youth orchestra for young Jewish and Arab musicians, called the West-Eastern Divan. Deeming the political climate of the Middle East too hot for such an initiative, Barenboim has flown his young musicians to Germany, the USA and Spain to perform together. And his choice, in a concert last year in Jerusalem, to present an encore by Wagner – a composer despised by some Jews, who associate his music with Hitler’s camps – has also won him enemies in Israel.
Not all Palestinians appreciate his efforts, either: the prominent Arab musician Khaled Jubran announced recently that he would not co-operate with Jewish musicians. “Ensembles of Jews and Arabs are commissioned to salve the conscience of Israeli intellectuals,” he stated. Jubran has established his own Centre for Arab Music on the outskirts of Ramallah.
Barenboim patiently explains his position: “I believe that there is no military solution to the conflict in the Middle East. So one day there will be a peace treaty, and from that moment on they will try to establish relations on a cultural basis, on a scientific basis, on an economic basis. And I say why do we have to wait for that? The lesson that we have learned from the 20th century is that we can’t just elect our political leaders and then just sit back and criticize them. I think there are a lot of things that the individual can and should do.”
However, he insists that he has no political ambitions – indeed, his penchant for direct action is exactly what distinguishes him from most politicians. And if his activities have brought criticism, they have also brought praise: in September he shared the Prince of Asturias Concord Prize (Spain’s equivalent to the Nobel Prize) with Said, and earlier this month he was awarded Germany’s Federal Cross of Merit.
Yet for all his successes, on stage and off, Barenboim has had his share of failures. In 1987 a conservative French government appointed him music director of Paris’ Bastille Opera, while it was still under construction. But before the new opera house was finished, a socialist French government fired him. (Weeks later, he was named music director of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, again following in the footsteps of Solti.) Three years ago, he felt the sting of rejection as the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra elected not him but the Englishman Sir Simon Rattle as its new music director. “I was disappointed at the time,” he admits. “I think there were many considerations. I think they wanted to go in a different direction – I’m not saying for the better or the worse.”
If he’s not fond of discussing the Berlin Philharmonic, he’s even more reluctant to discuss details of his first marriage, to the celebrated cellist Jacqueline du Pré, who died of multiple sclerosis in 1987. He praises her as a great artist, but quickly adds: “It’s very important for people in the public eye to know what part of their life is and should be public, and what is private. I think that belongs to the private side. I don’t think that this is something that is anybody’s business, frankly.” (His relationship with du Pré was touched upon in the 1998 bio-pic Hillary and Jackie. Barenboim says he’s never seen the film.)
Other controversies? In Barenboim’s life, there are plenty. He’s currently embroiled in a pitched battle to defend the autonomy of his Staatsoper and its Staatskapelle orchestra, which some Berlin officials want to merge with the city’s other opera house, the Deutsche Oper. It’s an issue that has touched raw nerves in the re-united capital: the Staatsoper is in the eastern part of the city, and the Deutsche Oper is in the west.
Then there’s his Chicago Symphony Orchestra, where a trickle of red ink on the books last year has now turned into a flood: the orchestra is over $6 million (U.S.) in debt. And his choice of the austere French composer Pierre Boulez as the CSO’s principal guest conductor has raised hackles in contemporary-music circles. American composer John Corigliano recently accused Boulez and Barenboim of excluding any new music “that does not fit the philosophical doctrine of modernism.” He added, “This is why the Chicago Symphony is now running a deficit and its audiences hate modern music.”
Barenboim offers a broader perspective on what ails his art. “The intellectual world has grown away from music, because of the lack of education,” he insists. “The main difference between the beginning of the 20th century and the beginning of the 21st is that people knew their Schoenberg – and also their Kandisky and their Baudelaire. But we are dealing with this as if it were only a marketing or public relations problem.”
If he’s concerned about the state of classical music, it’s not because he has cause to fear for his own future. Successful and powerful, at the beginning of his seventh decade he maintains a fresh, unsatiated attitude: for him, music – by its very nature – demands and generates constant renewal. “With music you never do everything because whatever you’ve done has disappeared. It’s the fascinating thing about music – sound evaporates. We played Bruckner’s Ninth yesterday. Where is it now? It’s gone.”
© Colin Eatock 2002
On a fall day in New York, pianist, conductor and controversy-magnet Daniel Barenboim holds court in a discreet Upper East Side hotel. The evening before, his Chicago Symphony Orchestra practically blew the doors off Carnegie Hall with a brassy rendition of Anton Bruckner’s Symphony No. 9 – yet the following morning finds him relaxed and soft spoken, as he casually lights up a Cuban cigar. These are, of course, illegal in the United States, but Barenboim does not always play by the rules.
In an era that tends to demand specialization from classical musicians, he maintains a dual career as a concert pianist and as the director of two major musical institutions: the CSO and Berlin’s Staatsoper. How does he balance these demands? “I don’t,” he replies with a smile. “What I try to do now is to have periods where I exclusively play, and other times when I exclusively conduct. It’s more difficult to go back and forth all the time, physically.”
Barenboim has always been ambitious – he once expressed the desire to conduct in London, New York and Los Angeles all in the same day. His solo piano recital tomorrow at Toronto’s Roy Thomson Hall comes two weeks after his 60th birthday, but the silver-haired maestro shows no sign of slowing down.
He made his debut in his native Buenos Aires 53 years ago at the age of seven. Three years later, his family moved to Israel and the Wunderkind proceeded to take Europe by storm, with recitals in Rome, Vienna, Paris and London. The distinguished German conductor Wilhelm Furtwängler called the boy “a phenomenon,” and at the age of 12 he recorded all of Mozart’s piano sonatas. He had his first taste of conducting in 1962, and in 1975 he succeeded Sir Georg Solti as music director of the Orchestre de Paris.
As impressive as all this sounds, for Barenboim it is not enough. He seems discontent with the thought of his music simply existing in the world – he wants it to have some kind of effect. And so he does remarkable things.
In September, he defied the Israeli government and gave a music class in the West Bank town of Ramallah, for Palestinian students. “For the two hours that I spent with the kids in the school, I reduced the level of hatred completely,” he says, warming to the subject. “For many of them it was the first time they thought something positive about anything from Israel. For me it was personally very satisfying, to be able to work with these children. Many of them may be the same ones who are throwing stones at Israeli tanks; maybe they are from the families of the suicide bombers. I have no idea – but for two hours they listened to music and played.”
This act was, to say the least, controversial in Israel. The Jerusalem Post sarcastically asked, “with friends like Barenboim, who needs enemies?” – and accused him of advocating a return to “the failed policy of concession and withdrawal.”
A few days later, he and his wife were set upon in a Jerusalem restaurant. “Two of these fanatics started insulting me and calling me a traitor, and said that I was Arafat’s friend – and that they would cut my tongue and break my hands,” he recalls. “But my wife didn’t understand, because she doesn’t speak Hebrew. She just saw the hatred in their eyes, took the salad bowl and threw it in their faces!” Barenboim makes light of the incident, but he well knows that in Israel broccoli can escalate to bullets: he has received death-threats by telephone.
The Ramallah excursion was not an isolated event – Barenboim has been shaking things up for several years. For the last four summers he and Palestinian scholar Edward Said have run a youth orchestra for young Jewish and Arab musicians, called the West-Eastern Divan. Deeming the political climate of the Middle East too hot for such an initiative, Barenboim has flown his young musicians to Germany, the USA and Spain to perform together. And his choice, in a concert last year in Jerusalem, to present an encore by Wagner – a composer despised by some Jews, who associate his music with Hitler’s camps – has also won him enemies in Israel.
Not all Palestinians appreciate his efforts, either: the prominent Arab musician Khaled Jubran announced recently that he would not co-operate with Jewish musicians. “Ensembles of Jews and Arabs are commissioned to salve the conscience of Israeli intellectuals,” he stated. Jubran has established his own Centre for Arab Music on the outskirts of Ramallah.
Barenboim patiently explains his position: “I believe that there is no military solution to the conflict in the Middle East. So one day there will be a peace treaty, and from that moment on they will try to establish relations on a cultural basis, on a scientific basis, on an economic basis. And I say why do we have to wait for that? The lesson that we have learned from the 20th century is that we can’t just elect our political leaders and then just sit back and criticize them. I think there are a lot of things that the individual can and should do.”
However, he insists that he has no political ambitions – indeed, his penchant for direct action is exactly what distinguishes him from most politicians. And if his activities have brought criticism, they have also brought praise: in September he shared the Prince of Asturias Concord Prize (Spain’s equivalent to the Nobel Prize) with Said, and earlier this month he was awarded Germany’s Federal Cross of Merit.
Yet for all his successes, on stage and off, Barenboim has had his share of failures. In 1987 a conservative French government appointed him music director of Paris’ Bastille Opera, while it was still under construction. But before the new opera house was finished, a socialist French government fired him. (Weeks later, he was named music director of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, again following in the footsteps of Solti.) Three years ago, he felt the sting of rejection as the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra elected not him but the Englishman Sir Simon Rattle as its new music director. “I was disappointed at the time,” he admits. “I think there were many considerations. I think they wanted to go in a different direction – I’m not saying for the better or the worse.”
If he’s not fond of discussing the Berlin Philharmonic, he’s even more reluctant to discuss details of his first marriage, to the celebrated cellist Jacqueline du Pré, who died of multiple sclerosis in 1987. He praises her as a great artist, but quickly adds: “It’s very important for people in the public eye to know what part of their life is and should be public, and what is private. I think that belongs to the private side. I don’t think that this is something that is anybody’s business, frankly.” (His relationship with du Pré was touched upon in the 1998 bio-pic Hillary and Jackie. Barenboim says he’s never seen the film.)
Other controversies? In Barenboim’s life, there are plenty. He’s currently embroiled in a pitched battle to defend the autonomy of his Staatsoper and its Staatskapelle orchestra, which some Berlin officials want to merge with the city’s other opera house, the Deutsche Oper. It’s an issue that has touched raw nerves in the re-united capital: the Staatsoper is in the eastern part of the city, and the Deutsche Oper is in the west.
Then there’s his Chicago Symphony Orchestra, where a trickle of red ink on the books last year has now turned into a flood: the orchestra is over $6 million (U.S.) in debt. And his choice of the austere French composer Pierre Boulez as the CSO’s principal guest conductor has raised hackles in contemporary-music circles. American composer John Corigliano recently accused Boulez and Barenboim of excluding any new music “that does not fit the philosophical doctrine of modernism.” He added, “This is why the Chicago Symphony is now running a deficit and its audiences hate modern music.”
Barenboim offers a broader perspective on what ails his art. “The intellectual world has grown away from music, because of the lack of education,” he insists. “The main difference between the beginning of the 20th century and the beginning of the 21st is that people knew their Schoenberg – and also their Kandisky and their Baudelaire. But we are dealing with this as if it were only a marketing or public relations problem.”
If he’s concerned about the state of classical music, it’s not because he has cause to fear for his own future. Successful and powerful, at the beginning of his seventh decade he maintains a fresh, unsatiated attitude: for him, music – by its very nature – demands and generates constant renewal. “With music you never do everything because whatever you’ve done has disappeared. It’s the fascinating thing about music – sound evaporates. We played Bruckner’s Ninth yesterday. Where is it now? It’s gone.”
© Colin Eatock 2002
