Daniel Barenboim - Career

Career

After performing in Buenos Aires, Barenboim made his international debut as a pianist in 1952 in Vienna and Rome. In 1955 he performed in Paris, in 1956 in London, and in 1957 in New York under the baton of Leopold Stokowski. Regular concert tours of Europe, the United States, South America, Australia and the Far East followed thereafter.

In June 1967, Barenboim and his then fiancée du Pré gave concerts in Jerusalem, Tel Aviv, Haifa and Beersheba before and during the Six-Day War.

His friendship with musicians Itzhak Perlman, Zubin Mehta, and Pinchas Zukerman, and marriage to du Pré led to the 1969 film by Christopher Nupen of their Schubert "Trout" Quintet.

Following his debut as a conductor with the English Chamber Orchestra in Abbey Road Studios, London in 1966, Barenboim was invited to conduct by many European and American symphony orchestras. Between 1975 and 1989 he was music director of the Orchestre de Paris, where he conducted much contemporary music.

Barenboim made his opera conducting debut in 1973 with a performance of Mozart's Don Giovanni at the Edinburgh Festival. He made his debut at Bayreuth in 1981, conducting there regularly until 1999. In 1988 he was appointed artistic and musical director of the Opera-Bastille in Paris, scheduled to open in 1990, but was fired in January 1989 by the opera's chairman Pierre Bergé. Barenboim was then appointed music director of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, a post he held until 17 June 2006. He expressed frustration with the need for fund-raising duties in the United States as part of being a music director of an American orchestra.

Since 1992 he has been music director of the Berlin State Opera and the Berlin Staatskapelle, succeeding in maintaining the independent status of the State Opera. He has tried to maintain the orchestra's traditional sound and style. In autumn 2000 he was made conductor for life of the Berlin Staatskapelle. On 15 May 2006 Barenboim was named principal guest conductor of La Scala opera house, in Milan, after Riccardo Muti's resignation. In October 2011 he took over as music director, lining up a starry opening cast in Mozart's Don Giovanni.

In 2006, Barenboim was the BBC Reith Lecturer, giving five lectures called 'In the Beginning was Sound' from London, Chicago, Berlin, and twice from Jerusalem in which he meditated on music. In the autumn of 2006, Barenboim gave the Charles Eliot Norton Lectures at Harvard University entitled 'Sound and Thought'.

In November 2006, Lorin Maazel submitted Barenboim's name as his nominee to succeed him as the New York Philharmonic's music director. Barenboim said he was flattered but "nothing could be further from my thoughts at the moment than the possibility of returning to the United States for a permanent position", repeating his lack of interest in the New York Philharmonic's music directorship or their newly created principal conductor position in April 2007. Barenboim made his conducting debut at the Metropolitan Opera in New York for the House's 450th performance of Wagner's Tristan und Isolde on 28 November 2008.

In 2009, he conducted the New Year Concert of the Vienna Philharmonic. In his New Year message, he expressed the hope that 2009 would be a year for peace and for human justice in the Middle East.