Daniel Barenboim, a world-renowned pianist and conductor, gave a concert at La Scala Theater in Milan, Italy this week, despite his advanced age and deteriorating health, two weeks after resigning as music director of the Berlin Stadtoper (National Opera House) on the 31st of last month. He took command and shocked the world.
Barenboim, who was confined to a wheelchair, successfully conducted the Mozart concert on the night of the 15th (local time) among the three scheduled conducts, and a standing ovation continued for five minutes. Due to his advanced age and failing health, he thanked the audience for the final curtain call by stamping his feet while seated.
Argentinian-born Daniel Barenboim suddenly received a call from La Scala at 7:15 am on the 12th, two weeks after officially retiring from the Berlin Staatsoper, where he had worked for 30 years. It was a call from Daniel Harding asking him to conduct three Mozart concerts that were canceled due to family circumstances.
Barenboim, who had retired due to ill health, was contacted by the Teatro alla Scala, where he had previously worked as chief conductor and then music director, for nearly ten years, and immediately went to Italy. On the morning of the 15th he was rehearsing at the theater.
“I was surprised too,” Barenboim told an Associated Press reporter. It felt like coming back after a week. It’s really moving,” he said. He felt familiar not only in the faces of the people, but also in the “sound” of the orchestra, he said.
His health problems are of course his biggest concern. Barenboim said he had to move slowly and take time to stand up once with various symptoms that could only be described as “severe neurological symptoms.”
However, people who watched the rehearsal said that from the moment Barenboim picked up the baton, his energy suddenly exploded.
Barenboim said he was determined to reach as many podiums as possible despite his old age. As he did at the New Year’s concert in Berlin, he would do it in a wheelchair, he explained, and he is doing the same in Milan.
“We will take the situation on a day-by-day basis,” he said.
“I expected that the disease would change my life, but it did not. As a musician, the things that were important in the past are still important. The feeling is so good that there is no problem with the command of the 15th. Hopefully the same on the 16th and 18th (Saturday). I’ll figure it out later,” he said.
But playing the piano is a different matter. Last year he played only twice officially. Piano performances for private gatherings are still possible.
During his 70-year career as a musician and conductor, Barenboim conducted orchestras in Berlin, Milan, Chicago and Paris, but he never slowed down. The slowness, he said, was unavoidable due to recent health problems.
“I had never been conscious of my age before. I lived without thinking that I was no longer in my 20s, 30s, 40s, 50s, 60s, or 70s. Then, suddenly, he was hit. But the fact that I can and still do music makes me feel good,” he said.
Retirement from the Berlin Opera was sad, but unavoidable. “It used to be a full-time position, and I can’t do that anymore. I didn’t even want to do that… ” he said.
Born in Argentina and making his first public concert debut at the age of seven, Barenboim’s Jewish grandparents fled Russia in the early 1900s and immigrated to the newly formed nation of Israel when Barenboim was 10 years old. His grandparents said they were taking Barenboim to a country where he could “live among the majority rather than among the minority.”
His parents gave him music education in Salzburg, Austria, but he was not invited to perform in Germany due to his antipathy to the Nazi Holocaust. Barenboim didn’t understand why Hitler’s hometown of Austria was all right and Germany was not.
The Berlin Stadt Oper Theater, which he considered his hometown for 30 years and was located in the former East Germany, became the cultural center of the world after German reunification. That made his career in Germany enduring regardless of his family history.
But even so, Barenboim said he was suffering greatly from the current world situation, including the Russian invasion of Ukraine. He says that the political issues within Israel and the Western countries’ decision to exclude Russian musicians are also unfair.
“Not all Russians are hostile to Ukraine,” he said. He said that he had traveled all over the world since the 1950s, but that the world today is more materialistic, harsh and tense than it was then.
In particular, he explained, “People these days don’t know how to listen to music.”
[밀라노( 이탈리아)= AP/뉴시스]
Source: Donga
Mark Jones is a world traveler and journalist for News Rebeat. With a curious mind and a love of adventure, Mark brings a unique perspective to the latest global events and provides in-depth and thought-provoking coverage of the world at large.