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So<\/span>mewhere in my earliest musical memories, a black- and-white TV presents a sliver of sonic heaven, as a stocky young pianist with blazing eyes and a forest of dusky curls plays Mozart. Over the years, that figure \u2013 Daniel Barenboim<\/a><\/strong> \u2013 has remained a <\/span>still point in a turning musical <\/span>world. He started at the top and, as both pianist and conductor, he stayed there. Now that he is turning 80, there\u2019s no point asking \u2018Maestro\u2019 (as he is usually called) if he is planning retirement. It\u2019s unthinkable.<\/span><\/p>\n Speaking to me from his office in Berlin, Barenboim is as direct as ever. He has always been a person who says what he means and means what he says, articulating his ideas with exceptional clarity and a certain amount of punch. Now he is characteristically upfront about how the Covid pandemic has been for him.<\/span><\/p>\n \u2018When the pandemic started, I was quite quiet about it,\u2019 he says. \u2018I used the time to practise things I hadn\u2019t played for a long time. But later I became less and less quiet. I think the pandemic is not only horrific in itself. It also brings with it a kind of general depression for all human beings, a lack of normality that I find very disturbing. I can\u2019t wait for it to go away.\u2019<\/span><\/p>\n Whether it will affect orchestral touring long-term, he says, is not clear. Earlier this year, of eight concerts in Germany and France he was due to give with his Berlin Staatskapelle, only three took place. \u2018It\u2019s understandable, but the financial difficulties, the inability to travel normally, all the paperwork \u2013 it really makes life very\u00a0complex.\u2019<\/span><\/p>\n Barenboim himself is complex at the best <\/span>of times. Twenty years ago, Paul Smaczny made a documentary about him called Multiple Identities<\/i>, an appropriate title given his myriad influences and activities. He was born in Buenos Aires in 1942, to a family of Russian Jewish immigrants: one set of grandparents had met on the boat to Argentina. Both his parents were piano teachers. \u2018Whenever the doorbell rang, it was somebody coming for a piano lesson,\u2019 he recalls. \u2018In my childish brain, everyone played the piano!\u2019 He gave his first concert aged seven. When he was ten, his family moved to Israel. Two years later, at Igor Markevitch\u2019s conducting masterclass in Salzburg, he came to the attention of the great conductor Wilhelm Furtw\u00e4ngler, who declared him a phenomenon. <\/span><\/p>\n Barenboim\u2019s two strands as pianist and conductor ran concurrently almost from the beginning \u2013 the two activities not so much feeding one another as presenting different manifestations of the same musical outlook. \u2018To play the piano in an interesting way, you have to think orchestrally, in the way you balance the chords and look for different colours,\u2019 Barenboim says. \u2018It\u2019s nothing to do with my being a conductor or not. I used to play piano, before I became a conductor too. <\/span><\/p>\n \u2018The piano is a very neutral instrument. Any weight you put on the key will make a sound \u2013 if you just put an ashtray on the E flat, the note sounds. But the neutrality gives you so many possibilities. It is like painting on a white wall, as opposed to a wall of green or yellow or black. Its neutrality means that you can really develop all sorts of sounds from this rather unimpressive start.\u2019 <\/span><\/p>\n Having heard him evoke an extraordinary spectrum in his cycles of Beethoven and Schubert sonatas in London, I want to know how he does it. \u2018If you have orchestral colours in your head, you will find the physical means,\u2019 he says. \u2018One note cannot be expressive on the piano. You can play a very expressive one note on the violin, cello or viola, but not on the piano, because the instrument doesn\u2019t have this disposition. It is the connection between two notes or more that makes the beauty of the sound on the piano. It cannot sustain a note at the same length as a stringed or wind instrument \u2013 when you put pressure on the note, the note makes the sound and it starts immediately to disappear. Therefore, playing the piano means a constant relation of the note with <\/span>time, because the time eats up the note. The piano is an instrument of illusion. And this <\/span>is one of the great pleasures of playing it.\u2019<\/span><\/p>\n When he turned 75, two boxed sets of his recordings were issued: 39\u00a0CDs as pianist, 46 as conductor. Now there are even more. Barenboim\u2019s latest piano album is Encores<\/i>, a programme of favourite short works: a Chopin Nocturne, Debussy\u2019s \u2018Clair de lune\u2019 and so on. \u2018\u201cEncore\u201d is a very nice word,\u2019 he remarks, allowing a twinkle into his voice. \u2018It means \u201cmore\u201d in French, but it is translated in different ways. In Spanish, the worst of all, it is called \u201cpropina\u201d: a tip, like a tip in a restaurant, and this is horrible!\u2019 He is at pains to point out that an encore after a recital \u2018is not a given\u2019.<\/span><\/p>\n He has seen plenty of changes in the way recordings are made, ever since his own first experiences of it in 1956, aged 13. \u2018I remember when CDs started coming out in the early 1980s: all these magnificent possibilities came in the sound and it was terribly complex and expensive. And now people hear music on the telephone.<\/span><\/p>\n \u2018Record companies will hate me for saying this, but actually they know, I think: music is basically impossible to record. Music is there to be heard as a one and only time. We have been very lucky to have had radio first, and then the old 78s. And then the long-playing record, and the little ones, the 45s, then stereo, then the CD. All this for make-believe! <\/span><\/p>\n \u2018Basically, the difference between listening to a record and listening to a live performance is like this: if you\u2019re deeply in love with someone, a recording is like having a photograph of that person, but going to the concert is like having her with you. Streaming is wonderful in this time of Covid and we can only be grateful for it, but it\u2019s like having a very good photograph of a person.\u2019<\/span><\/p>\n Recently, Barenboim has spoken publicly about Jacqueline du Pr\u00e9<\/a> <\/strong>for the first time since her death in 1987 from multiple sclerosis. In a BBC4 documentary, Daniel Barenboim: In His Own Words<\/i>, he reveals something of the artistic glory, passion and tragedy of their relationship. Their marriage has passed into the realm of legend \u2013 there is even a ballet about du Pr\u00e9, The Cellist<\/i>, by choreographer Cathy Marston, including a character called \u2018The Conductor\u2019. It was only in 2011 that Barenboim returned to conducting the Elgar Cello Concerto<\/a><\/strong>, the work most strongly associated with du Pr\u00e9, resulting in an award-winning recording with the American cellist Alisa Weilerstein and the Berlin Staatskapelle. <\/span><\/p>\n His life had already moved on by the time du Pr\u00e9 died. The Russian pianist Elena Bashkirova (daughter of the pianist Dmitri Bashkirov) became his second wife and one of their two sons, Michael, is now a well-established violin soloist. For a long spell they lived in Paris, where Barenboim was music director of the Orchestre de Paris from 1975-89. His next appointment, another long tenure, was with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra (1991-2006). Soon he was splitting his time between the US and Germany: he was appointed Staatskapellmeister <\/i>of Berlin\u2019s Staatsoper Unter den Linden and its orchestra in 1992, and \u2018chief conductor for life\u2019 in 2000.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n Hearing his performances with the Staatskapelle, you can be struck by the streamlined, micro-controlled quality as much as its dark-hued string tone and technicolour brass playing. Barenboim is adamant about how that sense of unity works: \u2018An orchestra that sounds well means that the whole orchestra breathes the same way and with the same intensity. There are many aspects: the phrasing, the dynamic accents, the legato, so many things. But basically you must make them breathe as if there was one major lung for the whole orchestra. <\/span><\/p>\n \u2018I\u2019m very happy conducting the Staatsoper,\u2019 he says, \u2018because I feel we all think the same way about what we are playing, the same dynamic, the same line. Now, it doesn\u2019t mean that it will always stay like this. Once the concert is over, if the musicians have different opinions about it, if they think something was maybe a little slow, that\u2019s absolutely OK \u2013 but they must think the same while playing. I don\u2019t claim that there is only one way to play every piece of music. Not at all. But for every piece, while the orchestra is playing, they must all think the same about it.\u2019<\/span><\/p>\n Back in 2019, allegations against him of bullying and a \u2018temperamental\u2019 or \u2018autocratic\u2019 approach surfaced from some of the orchestral players. Autocracy and temper are scarcely new to the conducting profession \u2013 even if they are thankfully less prevalent in it than they used to be \u2013 which may partly explain why Barenboim did not experience \u2018cancellation\u2019 by a spat of public outrage. The incident certainly hit the headlines, but the Staatsoper management stood by him, renewing his contract as general music director until 2027. That year Barenboim will turn 85. <\/span><\/p>\n Meanwhile he works as closely as ever with the West-Eastern Divan Orchestra, which he co-created in 1999 with the Palestinian scholar Edward Said, bringing young musicians from Israel and Arabic nations to work together and exchange ideas. Barenboim became in 2008 the first person to hold both an Israeli and a Palestinian passport, the latter presented to him in recognition of his efforts towards this exceptional cultural exchange. <\/span><\/p>\n The West-Eastern Divan too has been struck by the pandemic\u2019s restrictions: Barenboim says that last year they managed just a few concerts in Salzburg. In<\/span> May 2022, a significant European tour with Smetana\u2019s M\u00e1 vlast<\/i> is planned, culminating <\/span>in the Prague Spring Festival. \u2018I will be desolate if that gets cancelled,\u2019 he\u00a0remarks.<\/span><\/p>\n Yet whatever transpires, Barenboim\u2019s determination is undimmed: music can, will and must continue helping to bridge the gulfs between people. \u2018It\u2019s what music is about and what happens when there is a concert and people come to it,\u2019 he says. \u2018I remember playing Bach\u2019s The Well-Tempered Clavier<\/i> and Goldberg Variations<\/i> in Ramallah, and a feeling of community on evenings like this, which gives a lot of spiritual energy to the audiences there. The Israeli-Palestinian conflict is not a political conflict, it is a human conflict. It is two people who each believe they have the right to live on the same territory without the other, and this is not a constructive human way of thinking. The political developments of this problem are very unhealthy and nasty.\u2019<\/span><\/p>\n Having established the orchestra as a <\/span>beloved international presence, Barenboim <\/span>went on to realise a further cherished dream: the creation of the Barenboim-Said Academy in Berlin, a state-of-the-art conservatoire beside the Staatsoper with a magnificent new Frank Gehry-designed concert hall, the Pierre Boulez Saal, at its heart. Here the ideals of the West-Eastern Divan are being expanded. When its doors opened in 2016, Barenboim called it \u2018an experiment in utopia\u2019 as 90 talented Middle Eastern students were offered the chance to study there.<\/span><\/p>\n