Daniel Barenboim at 80

Catherine Peake looks at the renowned pianist and conductor’s long career in music

Daniel Barenboim will turn 80 this month. Born in Argentina to two professional musicians, he was immersed in music from the start, and began his musical career as a child prodigy. Moving with his family to Israel when he was ten years old, Barenboim was soon taking conducting lessons in Salzburg and composition lessons in Paris.

As one of the few musicians with an international career combining both performing and conducting, Barenboim gave his first public performance at the age of seven, with his international debut following at the age of ten. His first concert as a conductor was several years later in 1966 with the English Chamber Orchestra, and he conducted his first opera at the Edinburgh Festival in 1973. Over the years, Barenboim has held conducting and musical directorship posts with many eminent international orchestras including the Berlin State Opera, the Vienna Philharmonic, the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, and La Scala in Milan. The recipient of numerous awards, he received an honorary knighthood in 2011.

Marrying cellist Jacqueline du Pré in 1967, the pair became known for their recording of the Elgar Cello Concerto. During the period when a classical musician could attain the profile of a superstar, both were prominent members of the mainstream cultural life of the ‘60s. After du Pré’s death in 1987, Barenboim married pianist Elena Bashkirova with whom he had two sons.

In both performing and conducting, Barenboim maintained a musical style that owed little to the authentic performance movement, eschewing musicological studies and focusing on other twentieth practices such as rejecting composer metronome marks and finding the tempo from within the music itself. He also used the sustaining pedal of the piano in his recording of Bach’s The Well-Tempered Clavier, producing a very different sound to that of performers following the directives of more authentically based interpretations.

Illustrating his work as a thinker as well as a musician, Barenboim joined with scholar Edward Said to form the Barenboim-Said Academy that opened in 2016 in Berlin, aiming to create an institution in which students from both Israel and the Arab world could study music and the humanities. The Academy was complementary to the West-Eastern Divan Orchestra that he also formed with Said, which allows musicians from the Arab nations and Israel to study and perform together.

Barenboim took a leading role in the return of classical music to public life after COVID, working with flautist Emmanuel Pahud to curate the digital music festival Distance / Intimacy in 2020. Focusing on new music, the festival aimed to engage artistically with the pandemic and invited listeners to financially support arts and culture during what had proved to be a very difficult time for music.

Though still with an interest in projects located all over the world, Barenboim announced in October this year that he was reducing his workload due to health concerns. Having spent a lifetime in music, both taking inspiration from it and inspiring others’ dedication to it, he said, “What is, ultimately, perhaps the most difficult lesson for the human being – learning to live with discipline yet with passion, with freedom yet with order – is evident in any single phrase of music.”

Daniel Barenboim: 80 Years Pianist and conductor, Parts 1, 2 and 3, Tuesdays 1, 8 and 15 November 2022, 2:00pm