As both a conductor and a virtuoso pianist, Daniel Barenboim approaches each of his projects from a dual perspective: he sees a piece as both a physical, sonorous expression and as a structural whole. For Barenboim, integrating the two perspectives is...
[more]As both a conductor and a virtuoso pianist, Daniel Barenboim approaches each of his projects from a dual perspective: he sees a piece as both a physical, sonorous expression and as a structural whole. For Barenboim, integrating the two perspectives is essential to making good music. "The element of physical contact is missing from conducting," Barenboim says. "The expressivity of sound depends on one's understanding of its characteristics." It is with this subtle, nuanced understanding that Baremboim approaches each of his musical roles.
Barenboim's career began in Buenos Aires (the city of his birth) when he was a scant seven years old. He gave a public recital of a Mozart concerto and was recognized immediately as a prodigy. At age 11 he was already hailed as a sensation, which provided him with ample opportunities in the world of classical music. By the age of 13 he had moved to Paris to study with Nadia Boulanger.
The vastly flexible Barenboim not only moves between divergent moods within a single classical concert, he also moves between genres, experimenting with Argentinian tango, Brazilian music, and jazz. In 1999 he released a tribute to Duke Ellington with Diane Reeves, Don Byron, and Chicago-based jazz musicians. Soon after, he engaged in a collaboration with Brazilian pop star Milton Nascimento.
Despite these peripheral projects, he remains dedicated to classical music. Mozart's work in particular has made a lasting impression, remaining central through the years to Barenboim's musical sensibility. In 1954 he recorded complete cycles of Mozart's piano sonatas (as well as concertos by Beethoven, Brahms, and Bartok). He has been highly acclaimed for his capacity to render Mozart's playful, lambent, joyous rushes in a manner that does true justice to the erotic energy of "Don Giovanni." And yet, within the same concert, he can shift into the dark tumult of a Beethoven sonata and handle its morbid weight as deftly as he handles Mozart's ebullient lightness. In everything he approaches, Barenboim feels the music with the sensibility of an instrumentalist, orchestrating rhythm and pace with a sense for the specific expressive features of each composition. His skill eventually landed him positions as both pianist and conductor of the English Chamber Orchestra.
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