Customer Reviews

Daniel Barenboim: A Life in Music

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If this review title sounds a bit pretentious, that is the feeling I have from Mr. Barenboim's book which tends toward the didactic. It reminds me of Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau's memoir "Reverberations" where he never mentions his four wives or children. It is a European sensibility that one's personal life is no business of the public and to some extent I agree. Barenboim does devote two pages to his relationship with his wife, the cellist Jacqueline Du Pre, but I would have preferred more transparency about their life together as it relates to music making. Nevertheless there is much of interest for the reader interested in music as Barenboim tells of his childhood in Argentina and teenage years in Israel. His only piano teacher was his father who taught him well. He also studied composition with Nadia Boulanger in Paris, and conducting with Igor Markevich in Salzburg. Over the years he has maintained close relationships with some of the other great pianists like Artur Rubinstein, Claudio Arrau and Sir Clifford Curzon. Barenboim has led an extraordinary life as both world-class pianist and conductor simultaneously, while in his later years his conducting has taken up most of his time. His experiences and friendships with some of the great conductors such as Wilhelm Furtwängler, Otto Klemperer, George Szell and Pierre Boulez are most interesting and informative about these conductors' styles and habits. Also interesting are Barenboim's well-informed views of politics: Israel, Zionism, the Arab world and peace. David Ben-Gurion, the first prime minister of Israel, was a family friend. The book is organized topographically and works quite well as a checkerboard of themes. Alternating with the narrative of Barenboim's musical life and his collaborations with other instrumentalists such as Pinchas Zuckerman and singers such as Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau are chapters dealing in an abstract, didactic way with musical matters relating to piano performance and conducting, the orchestral repertoire and the works of various composers and the issues of interpretation. But just when the text gets overly preachy, the writer wisely turns back to the narrative of his life which keeps the book interesting. Here are some quotes to whet your appetite:
"It is no coincidence that most of [Furtwängler's] tempo indications in German are expressed in the negative, like 'nicht zu geschwind, nicht zu schnell, nicht zu langsam', whereas in Italian it is 'allegro, piu vivace'."
"What does 'Romantic' really mean? If you do not play strictly in time and adopt a certain freedom with dynamics, people think you are a Romantic. If you play expressively, but in tempo, you are a classical conductor!"
"Very often singers in particular are unable to correct intonation problems which they are made aware of by the conductor because they lose the sense of self-assurance which is necessary, and it becomes an emotional or psychological issue."
"The Japanese audience's approach to music is very different from what we are used to in Europe or America; [in Japan] there is a palpable feeling of concentration in the audience, which is very inspiring to the musician on stage."

The book takes the reader on a journey through Daniel Barenboim's life, from child prodigy to world-class musician. However, as a pianist myself, the one thing I remember most, after reading the book, can be found on the bottom of page 6, spilling over to the top of page 7: "..I was never made to practise scales or arpeggios..My father's teaching was based on the belief that there are enough scales in Mozart's concertos.." No doubt Mr. Barenboim is subtly suggesting that technical exercises for the fingers - such as the aforementioned scales and arpeggios - as well as other finger exercises are of little value in the development of finger dexterity. I have approached three other pianists (two of them of international renown and one of them a personal acquaintance of Mr. Barenboim and his father) to ask their opinion of Mr. Barenboim's suggestion. So far not one them thinks that the Maestro is being completely honest in his revelations..