Conductor and pianist Daniel Barenboim was born in Buenos Aires in 1942. Both parents taught piano and were their son’s sole piano teachers. He gave his first public performance at the age of seven. In 1952 the family moved to Israel, where Barenboim won the American-Israel Cultural Foundation Competition in 1953, which gave him a scholarship to study with Nadia Boulanger in Paris. In addition, he attended courses in conducting with Igor Markevitch and in 1954 was introduced to Wilhelm Furtwängler, who described him as a “phenomenon.” During the first phase of his career, Barenboim performed as a concert pianist all over the world. Ever since he made his conducting debut with the Philharmonia Orchestra (1967), he has been in demand by all the major orchestras. He undertook his first tenured position leading the Orchestre de Paris from 1975 to 1989, and between 1991 and 2006 he was Music Director of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, which subsequently named him Honorary Conductor. He made his operatic debut in 1973 with Mozart’s Don Giovanni at the Edinburgh Festival; in 1981 he conducted for the first time at Bayreuth, remaining active there each summer until1999. Since 1992 Barenboim has been General Music Director of the Berlin Staatsoper, while the Staatskapelle Berlin appointed him Chief Conductor for life in 2000. As “Maestro Scaligero” he began a close partnership with Milan’s La Scala in 2007 which led to his appointment as Music Director in 2011. In addition Barenboim leads the West-Eastern Divan Orchestra, which was founded in 1999 and brings together young musicians from Israel, Arabic countries, and Spain. Barenboim has received many awards for his artistic and cultural-political work, including the Prince of Asturias Concord Prize, the Buber-Rosenzweig Medal, the Siemens Music Prize, the Goethe Medal, Japan’s Praemium Imperiale Award, and the Westphalian Peace Prize.
LUCERNE FESTIVAL (IMF) debut on 25 August 1966 in piano concertos by Mozart and Beethoven with the English Chamber Orchestra.
April 2012