Daniel Barenboim, Renowned Jewish Conductor, to Take Up Baton for Two New Year’s Concerts After Health Break
Edited by: TJVNews.com
Advancing age and health related concerns will not stop Daniel Barenboim, renowned pianist and a titan among the world’s musical conductors from taking up the baton again for two New Year’s concerts, his venue said on Friday, according to an AFP report.
On November 8th, the New York Times reported that Barenboim had been sidelined by illness — which he has described as a “serious neurological condition” — forcing him to cancel those plans along with months of other scheduled engagements. Once one of classical music’s busiest performers, he now finds himself, on doctor’s orders, largely confined to his home in Berlin. He has cut back on his study of musical scores, his friends say, and he plays the piano less frequently, the NYT reported.
Now, Berlin’s State Opera, where Barenboim has been general musical director since 1992, said he would “conduct Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony on December 31 and January 1,” according to the AFP report.
Barenboim, 80, had already cancelled a series of concerts for health reasons this year. It was not immediately clear whether he would be scheduling further appearances in 2023, AFP reported.
In October, Barenboim tweeted, “My health has deteriorated over the last months, and I have been diagnosed with a serious neurological condition. I must now focus on my physical well-being as much as possible.” He added that he had made the announcement with “a combination of pride and sadness,” as was reported by AFP.
“He’s not very happy at all to see a figure like him weakened in any way,” said Antonio Pappano, the music director of the Royal Opera House in London and a Barenboim protégé, as was reported by the NYT. “It doesn’t compute somehow. He’s a dragon slayer. Always has been. So it’s very unusual.”
“He definitely expects to be back; I don’t think there’s any other option in his mind,” said the violinist Michael Barenboim, one of his sons, according to the NYT report. “You never know with these things. But I don’t think he has any doubt.”
The NYT also reported in November that many of the institutions that Barenboim leads, including the Staatskapelle Berlin (the pit ensemble of the State Opera) and the West-Eastern Divan Orchestra, which became internationally renowned ensembles under his direction, have scrambled to find substitutes as they wrestle with the uncertainty of his condition.
The Berlin-based Barenboim was born in Argentina to Jewish parents, the AFP reported. He has been acclaimed for a stellar career which saw him begin performing internationally as a pianist at the age of 10. He moved to Israel as a teen and later become a leading conductor, the report indicated.
The NYT reported that he has sought to use music to bridge political divides. In 1999, he founded, along with the Palestinian intellectual Edward Said, the Divan Orchestra to provide a forum for young Arab and Israeli musicians to play together, the NYT report added.
He also founded the Barenboim-Said Akademie in Berlin, which trains gifted musicians mainly from the Middle East and North Africa for a professional career, according to the AFP report.
“You could call him one of the very few atomic reactors in classical music, in a positive way,” said Michael Haefliger, the executive and artistic director of the Lucerne Festival in Switzerland, as was reported in the NYT. “There is always something happening. He is always moving the world. He never stands still.”
