Daniel Barenboim

Daniel Barenboim (1942- ), conductor and pianist of international standing, Barenboim was born in Argentina but is now an Israeli citizen. Criticized in his early years for a lack of restraint he has become acknowledged as one of the world's leading conductors and a pianist of great sensitivity.

Barenboim, whose parents were both piano teachers, made his debut at the age of seven in Buenos Aires. His family left Argentina, first moving to Europe where he played at the Salzburg Mozarteum in 1951, then to Israel. His musical education included studying conducting in Salzburg and composition in Rome.

In 1955 he made his British debut, and in 1957 his American. His conducting debut was in Israel in 1962, and from then on he was able to combine both playing and conducting in a career that has attracted international praise, albeit with some reservations. Since the mid-1960s he has conducted and performed with the English Chamber Orchestra, the London Symphony Orchestra, the New York Philharmonic Orchestra, the Orchestre de Paris, and the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra. In the 1970s he directed musical festivals, and expanded his conducting repertory to include opera. His work with great soloists, either accompanying them or conducting, includes Rubinstein, Janet Baker, Itzhak Perlman, and Jacqueline du Pré, whom he married in 1967.

Barenboim is highly regarded as an interpreter of both Romantic and Classical music. His piano repertory is not wide and includes Mozart, Beethoven (he has recorded all the piano sonatas), Brahms, and Chopin. His conducting repertory is wider and extends to Bach, much French music, Bruckner, Tchaikovsky, and Elgar. He is particularly renowned as a conductor of Wagner, and has notably defended performances of his music in his homeland, where the composer’s anti-semitism makes it a controversial choice of repertoire. In 1991 he succeeded Georg Solti as music director of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, and the following year became general music director of the Deutsche Staatsoper in Berlin. In 2000 the Staatskapelle Berlin appointed him Chief Conductor for Life. Declining to renew his contract with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra when it expired in 2006, he was appointed principal guest conductor at La Scala the same year.

In 1992 Barenboim published an account of his life, entitled Daniel Barenboim: A Life in Music, of which an updated version was published ten years later. A second publication in 2002, Parallels and Paradoxes: Explorations in Music and Society, contained a series of conversations between Barenboim and the Palestinian-born writer Edward Said. A chance meeting between the two men in the early 1990s led to a powerful collaboration that worked towards promoting peace and cooperation between feuding factions in the Middle East, often through music but not always without controversy. One of their most enduring and well-publicized projects has been the West-Eastern Divan orchestra, founded in 1998; the ensemble is made up of talented young musicians from Israel and the Palestinian territories and has performed internationally with Barenboim to great acclaim.