Â鶹APP

Top 10 Interesting Facts about Daniel Barenboim

Barenboim at a concert. Photo by Junta de Andalucía.

Daniel Barenboim, Israeli pianist and conductor.  He is best known for his audacious efforts to promote peace in the Middle East through music. As a pianist, Barenboim was admired for his artistic interpretations of Mozart and Beethoven’s works.

He was best known as a conductor for his work with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra. Barenboim has received numerous honors and awards, including seven Grammys, an honorary Knight Commander of the Order of the British Empire. He received Spain’s Prince of Asturias Concord Award in 2002, along with Palestinian-American scholar Edward Said.

Barenboim is a multilingual musician who speaks Spanish, Hebrew, English, French, Italian, and German. He is a self-proclaimed Spinozist who has been greatly influenced by Spinoza’s life and thought.

1. Daniel Barenboim gave his first public concert at the age of 7

Daniel Barenboim as a kid. Photo by David Eldan.

Daniel Barenboim was born on November 15, 1942, in Buenos Aires. His Jewish Ukrainian parents were both music teachers. They were, advised by Adolf Busch, to allow their prodigy son to make his Argentine debut as a pianist when he was seven years old.

Barenboim and his family relocated to Europe two years later, where he performed at the Salzburg Mozarteum and studied conducting with Igor Markevich.

2. Barenboim was a pianist

Barenboim worked extensively as a pianist with the English Chamber Orchestra. In 1964, Barenboim made his debut with that organization, performing the Mozart Piano Concertos.

He stayed on tour with the chamber orchestra for more than a decade, performing in England, Japan, and the United States. In addition to Mozart’s works, they frequently performed Beethoven, Brahms, and Sir John Barbirolli’s music.

Barenboim’s extensive piano repertoire included Chopin and Schubert, and he performed Beethoven’s 32 Sonatas and five concertos under the direction of Otto Klemperer.

3. Barenboim was a conductor

Daniel Barenboim. Photo by Sebaso.

Barenboim was invited to conduct by a number of European and American symphony orchestras. He was the music director of the Orchestre de Â鶹APP from 1975 to 1989, where he conducted a lot of contemporary music.

Barenboim made his opera conducting debut in 1973, at the Edinburgh Festival, with a performance of Mozart’s Don Giovanni. He made his Bayreuth debut in 1981 and conducted there on a regular basis until 1999.

He was appointed artistic and musical director of the Opéra Bastille in Â鶹APP in 1988, with the opera’s chairman Pierre Bergé firing him in January 1989. In 1989, Barenboim was named music director designate of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra. In 1991, he succeeded Sir Georg Solti as music director, a position he held until June 17, 2006. 

He expressed dissatisfaction with the requirement for fund-raising duties in the United States as part of his role as music director of an American orchestra. 

3. Barenboim was fired from Â鶹APP Opera de la Bastillie

Daniel Barenboim. Photo by GCBA.

Barenboim was appointed Artistic Director of the Â鶹APP Opera de la Bastille in the late 1980s. He was not to last long in this position, as the president of the Â鶹APP Opera Association forced Barenboim to resign his post because Barenboim refused to reduce his substantial salary.

4. Daniel Barenboim hit the recording studio

As the 1990s came to an end, the turn of the millennium in 2000 saw Barenboim go to the recording studio as well as Carnegie Hall and other venues as a pianist.

Tangos Among Friends, Barenboim’s popular piano recording, was released in 1996, and in 1997 Teldec released a piano duet featuring Barenboim and Tchaikovsky-award-winning pianist, Radu Lupu—Marches Schubert’s Militaires and “Grand Duo”

Barenboim has continued to perform and record chamber music, occasionally with members of the orchestras he has conducted. Messiaen’s Quartet for the End of Time with members of the Orchestre de Â鶹APP during his tenure, Richard Strauss with members of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, and Mozart’s Clarinet Trio with members of the Berlin Staatskapelle are a few examples.

In 2017, Sony Classical released Daniel Barenboim – A Retrospective, a box set of Barenboim’s orchestral recordings on 43 CDs and three DVDs to commemorate his 75th birthday.

6. Daniel Barenboim has received 6 Grammy Awards

In 1976 Barenboim received a Grammy Award for Best Opera Recording-Honored for : Beethoven: The Five Piano Concertos.

1990 Grammy Award for Best Chamber Music Performance- Honored for : Brahms: The Three Violin Sonatas. 

1991 Grammy Award for Best Orchestral Performance-Honored for : Symphony No. 1 (Chicago Symphony Orchestra, feat. Conductor: Daniel Barenboim).

1994 Grammy Award for Best Chamber Music Performance-Honored for : Beethoven & Mozart Quintets (feat. piano: Daniel Barenboim, winds from the Chicago & Berlin Symphonies)

 2001 Grammy Award for Best Instrumental Soloist(s) Performance (with orchestra)-Honored for : Strauss Wind Concertos – Horn Concerto; Oboe Concerto

2002 Grammy Award for Best Opera Recording. Honored for : Tannhauser (Barenboim)

2004 Wolf Prize in Arts. (Music – a cellist, conductor, pianist and exceptional human being, who has created a career of monumental proportions.)

2013 Echo Award for Social Commitment Honor.

7. Daniel Barenboim had a Palestinian citizenship

Daniel Barenboim, a controversial figure among Israelis for advocating for Palestinian rights and the works of Hitler’s favorite composer, accepted  honorary Palestinian citizenship. He became the first Jewish Israeli citizen to be granted Palestinian citizenship.

Barenboim expressed hope that it would serve as a public act of peace.  Some Israelis chastised Barenboim for accepting it. The Shas party’s parliamentary faction chairman demanded that Barenboim’s Israeli citizenship be revoked, but the Interior Minister told the media that “the matter is not even up for discussion.” 

8. Daniel Barenboim remarried after his first wife died

Daniel Barenboim and his wife. Photo by Luis Castilla.

Cellist Jacqueline Du Pré and pianist and conductor Daniel Barenboim were one of the most spectacularly talented couples. They met in 1966 and married the following year in Jerusalem during Israel’s Six-Day War.

They were fortunate to have recordings of cello and piano sonatas, such as the glorious Brahms Sonata in F major, as well as chamber music that they created together. Du Pré was best known for her masterful recording of Elgar’s Cello Concerto. She died in 1987 after being diagnosed with multiple sclerosis.

Soon after in 1988 Daniel Barenboim remarried a Russian pianist Elena Bashkirova after falling in love with her. Bashkirova is a world-renowned soloist. The artistic director of the Jerusalem International Chamber Music Festival, and the founder of Berlin Metropolis.

They have two sons, and Bashkirova frequently collaborates with classical violinist Michael Barenboim.

9. Barenboim’s political views

As a supporter of human rights, Barenboim is a vocal critic of Israel’s conservative governments and the Israeli occupation of Palestinian territories.

Barenboim accused Israel of acting in a “morally abhorrent and strategically wrong” manner, putting the “very existence of the state of Israel” in jeopardy.

Barenboim has publicly advocated for a two-state solution for Israelis and Palestinians alike. 

10. He performed during war

Barenboim and du Pré had performed for Israeli troops on the front lines during the Six-Day War in 1967. They also performed during the Yom Kippur War in 1973.

He and an orchestra performed in gas masks in Israel during the Gulf War.