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
In times of totalitarian or autocratic rule, music (indeed culture in general) is often the only avenue of independent thought. It is the only way people can meet as equals, and exchange ideas. Culture then becomes primarily the voice of the oppressed and it takes over from politics as a driving force for change.
And in English you have this wonderful difference between listening and hearing, and that you can hear without listening, and you can listen and not hear.
Anti-Semitism has no historical, political and certainly no philosophical origins. Anti-Semitism is a disease.
Music has the capacity to create a greater reality.
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.
I would like to be a terrorist for music education - to make a complete reform, all over the world.
Every great work of art has two faces, one toward its own time and one toward the future, toward eternity.
For many people, music is here to let them forget the daily chores of life.