C
onductor and pianist Daniel
Barenboim feels like an emis-
sary from a different age of
classical music. At the age of 79
he can look back on 70 years
as a performer, from nine-
year-old prodigy to grand old man. He
can recall encounters with such figures
from the past as the pianist Artur
Rubinstein, who gave him cigars and
vodka when he was 14 years old.
In London in the 1960s Barenboim
fell in love with the cellist Jacqueline du
Pré and with a rising generation of clas-
sical stars who made music seem sexy
and glamorous. He went on to establish
a towering career, full of notable
events, such as playing Beethoven’s
First Piano Concerto with the Berlin
Philharmonic three days after the Ber-
lin Wall came down, controversially
re-introducing the music of Wagner to
Israel, and establishing the West-East-
ern Divan Orchestra to bring musicians
to cry. “For days I couldn’t stop think-
ing, how is it possible to murder six
million Jews with the coldness this
decision requires and be in a position
where you can be moved by music and
be moved to tears. How can somebody
who murders millions have this kind of
humanity? This is a subject that really
preoccupies me very often,” he says.
That exploration of the power of
music obsesses and drives him. “Music
is a humanistic message,” he says.
“Music is utopia.” cNew Year’s Day Concert from Vienna,
conducted by Daniel Barenboim, BBC2,
10.15am/BBC4, 7pmfrom the Arab world and Israel together.
It is quite a life — and he is quite a man.
“I have seen many changes which I
admire and some which I admire less,”
he says from his home in Berlin, where
he is conductor for life of the Staatska-
pelle. He likes the internationalism that
helps musicians to understand music
from all countries, but holds trenchant
views. “The invention of classical
music marketing is an insult to what
classical music is about. Classical music
is about everything except mate-
rial things.”
In a riveting BBC4 docu-
mentary, Daniel Barenboim:
In His Own Words, he also
talks about his relationship
with the British cellist du Pré,
whose life was destroyed when
she developed the symptoms of
MS and was forced to stop performing
in 1973 at the age of 28. She died 14 years
later. “I met many very talented musi-
cians, but she was unique,” he says. “She
had a capacity to see a page of music and
immediately possess it, see everything
that was in it. You had the feeling she
was born with all this music inside her.”
They got married in 1967 and the
footage shows a couple united in happi-
ness; after she falls ill, the terrible sad-
ness in Barenboim’s face, as she talks
bravely for the cameras, tells its own
story. “It was hell on earth for her, for us.
But there was absolutely no hesitation
in my mind that I was going to stay with
her, be with her, whatever happened,”Only conduct Daniel Barenboim.
Below: with Jacqueline du Pré in 1968Legendary conductor Daniel
Barenboim talks candidly about
70 years in music, Hitler’s tears
at Wagner — and his double life
with first wife Jacqueline du Pré.
Interview by Sarah Crompton MICHAEL KAPPELER. INSET: GETTY IMAGES
‘I NEVER
CLAIM
THAT I’M
A SAINT’
he says. Later, he adds: “I never claim,
nor do I now, that I am or was a saint.
But I did what I could.”
He went on to fall in love with the
Russian-born pianist Elena Bashkirova
with whom he had two sons while du
Pré was still alive. “We didn’t hide
them, as it were, but it was never men-
tioned in the press until after Jacque-
line’s death so I will always be very
grateful for that,” he says, simply. He
says of the sad situation: “If you spent
21 years with somebody and 18 of the
21 years she was sick. It’s natural.. .”
Then his voice trails away.
Is it difficult always to be
defined by that blazing, tragic
moment? “When you are rela-
tively well known you have to
come to terms with the fact
that people will gossip about
you and say true things and
say false things and exaggerate
others. The only way to deal with
that is not to pay any attention.”
So much in his life and in his music-
making seems to spring from a willing-
ness to embrace complexity; to see both
sides of a position. This impulse comes
from his upbringing in the cultural
melting pot of Buenos Aires, where Jews
and Nazis played side by side. “I was
also very lucky to have parents who
educated me to say, ‘Yes, but.. .’ That
gave me the ability to look seriously at
ideas that were different to mine.”
In the film, he talks about his encoun-
ters with Wolfgang Wagner when he was
conducting at Bayreuth, and how Wag-
ner offered to show him the point in
the Lohengrin score where Hitler beganHumperdinck’s Hansel & Gretel
This 2008 recording of the Royal
Opera House’s production features
Anja Silja as the scariest of witches.
Christmas Day, Radio 3A Musical Family Christmas with
the Kanneh-Masons
All seven of the musical siblings are
reunited for a joyous concert at their
family home. Christmas Day, BBC2Royal Opera: La bohème
Sonya Yoncheva stars as Mimì in this
performance of Puccini’s operatic
masterpiece, recorded at Covent
Garden in 2020. Boxing Day, BBC4Hugh CanningCLASSICAL CHRISTMAS
CLASSICAL
Daniel
Barenboim: In
His Own Words is
on BBC4 tonight
at 9pm, then
iPlayer19 December 2021 25