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Daniel Barenboim plays Brahms' "First Piano Concerto."
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A triple threat, Daniel Barenboim is renowned as a concert pianist, a conductor of both opera and symphonic works, and a chamber musician from his recordings with violinist Pinchas Zukerman and his late wife, cellist Jacqueline du Pré. He divides his time between Chicago, where he is music director of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra -- a post he has announced that he will resign following the 2005-2006 season -- and Berlin's Staatsoper and its orchestra, the Staatskapelle. He has had a long association with the Berlin Philharmonic, performing as both a soloist and a conductor, including performances of the standard repertoire and contemporary works. The Bayreuth Festival has also figured largely in his career, where he conducted "Parsifal," "Tristan und Isolde," and a complete "Ring" cycle in 1988. In 1999, he co-founded the West-East Divan Orchestra with his close friend, the late literary critic and scholar Edward Said. Comprised of talented young Israeli and Arab musicians, the project aims to promote understanding across the borders of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. GREAT PERFORMANCES met with him for an interview during the intermission of a semistaged production of "Le nozze di Figaro" he conducted at the Ravinia Festival, the summer home of the Chicago Symphony.
GREAT PERFORMANCES: What is it like to perform a monumental work [such] as the Brahms piano concerto in such a monumental place as the Theater of Herodes Atticus, near the Acropolis?
Daniel Barenboim: Well, it's odd because it looks absolutely oversized, as it were, on television, I imagine, as I've never seen it [the program]. But when you are there, it has great intimacy and the sound is so wonderful. The sound is really absolutely wonderful.
The problem with playing outdoors is not what people think, very often: how to get it loud, loud enough. Because there comes a point where, since it is open air, it [the sound] doesn't rebound, and therefore, that's the limit. The problem is when you're playing down, but there one can play very soft.
GP: You wrote in your autobiography that "There are certain pieces, like Brahms' 'First Concerto,' where the actual physical strain of playing is part of the music." What exactly did you mean by that?
DB: Well, there are some pieces, there are virtuoso pieces, where playing them with aplomb and with great liveliness is part of the music. And other pieces where there is a lot of strain in the emotion, if you like, of the piece, in the structure, in the music, and [to get] that strength you have to, as it were, sometimes fight against the instrument and against the instruments in the orchestra to get the very strong sound.
GP: A sense of struggle.
DB: Yes.
GP: How does your knowledge and your love of Wagner, who obviously came a little bit before Brahms, and your knowledge of the Second Viennese School influence your performance of Brahms, if at all? The other work on this broadcast is of the Schoenberg orchestration of the Brahms "First Piano Quartet."
DB: Of course, everything you know in life influences what you do, and everything that you don't know also influences what you do. You can't separate them, but one has to, of course, be aware of the stylistic differences.
But the orchestration of the quartet is of course a very interesting experiment. It doesn't tell us much about Brahms, but it tells us a lot about Schoenberg. What kind of music he associates with certain instruments: what he uses the clarinet for, what he uses the strings for. It's a very interesting experiment.
GP: Do you think he was trying to tell us more about himself?
DB: No. I'm just saying he doesn't tell us much about Brahms, but he tells us a little about himself. I mean, if Stravinsky had orchestrated the Brahms piano quartet, he would have orchestrated it completely different.
GP: Was it very difficult to watch Sir Simon Rattle tell the musicians what to do, after your long association with the orchestra?
DB: No, he is a wonderfully flexible musician, and it was really a very close collaboration. We obviously met before and went through the piece in detail so that we were at one with each other.
GP: Had you worked with him before this?
DB: No.
GP: Another part of this broadcast is the connection with the upcoming Olympics in Athens. Do you think there is any message music-making and music shares with the Olympic spirit, or if there is any give and take between those two?
DB: There is an aspect of, a sort of an athletic aspect in music, in some music, in some virtuoso pieces, which is very comparable. The idea of competition, of course, is not. It is very easy [to determine that] somebody who runs 100 meters in a couple seconds less than somebody else is obviously better, but in music, especially when you get to a certain level, there is no "better." It is different. Music is not a sport, really.
But I think there is a lot to learn, there is a lot for us musicians to learn, from sport, from teamwork, from how to play, sometimes, alone. In basketball, when you have somebody like Michael Jordan, how he was able to leap, and then everybody went with him. So that they have in common, orchestra and sport, the sensibility of a team. Look at all these great soccer teams now in Europe, many of them have great figures, great size, one or two who can really lead, you know, but in the end, they only win when these people know how to go back in the collective spirit and when to take the initiative. In that respect, it [playing music] is the same.
GP: What about all of the different countries coming together during the Olympics?
DB: Well, the Olympics were always universal. And that, of course, they also have in common: both music and sports are not the property of any nation. Nor is democracy, contrary to what some people believe in America. Democracy is not the property of any nation. It is not an American value; it's not a European value.
Mr. Barenboim then excused himself to finish the opera.
An interview by the writer Marc Geelhoed for GREAT PERFORMANCES Online.
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