Daniel Barenboim is progressing day by day

MILAN (AP) — No one was more surprised than Daniel Barenboim by the spontaneous response of Milan’s Teatro alla Scala just two weeks after he officially resigned as musical director of the Berlin State Opera after 30 years at this job.

A huge figure in classical music, the 80-year-old conductor and pianist received a call Sunday at 7:15 a.m. with an unexpected invitation to conduct three Mozart concertos, after Daniel Harding canceled for family reasons. A few days later, Barenboim – who quit his job in Berlin for health reasons – was rehearsing at La Scala, a theater where he worked for nearly a decade as principal director and then musical director.

“It was like I was gone for a week, I was really emotional, really,” Barenboim told The Associated Press, noting that more than the faces, he found a familiarity “in the sound.”

There is no doubt that his health remains the number one concern after being diagnosed with what he described only as “a serious neurological condition”. He moves slowly and takes his time on his feet. However, people who have seen him rehearse say his energy is evident as soon as he takes over.

Despite illness, Barenboim, born in Buenos Aires in 1942, is determined to occupy as much of the conductor’s podium as possible, even if it means sitting down, which he did for a New Year’s concert in Berlin, and what could do it again? In Milan. “We will have a day-to-day approach,” he said.

“I know they expect me to say that this disease has changed my life. No,” he insisted. “The things that were very important to me as a musician before are still very important. The things that weren’t important are still not. I can’t say. I feel perfectly fine, but I feel good enough to drive tomorrow, and hopefully Thursday and Saturday. Then we’ll see.”

The piano is something else. He only played twice in public last year. He did not reveal whether he was playing privately.

What is clear is that at no time in his seven-decade career around the world, conducting orchestras from Berlin to Milan, Chicago or Paris, did Barenboim consider slowing his frantic pace. That was until his health forced him to.

“I never felt my age. I never considered that. That I wasn’t 20, or 30, or 40, or 50, or 60, or 70 anymore,” Barenboim said. “They gave me a blow, but I feel good and I can make music. I’m very happy to make music”.

Resigning from the Berlin State Opera, known in German as the Staatsoper, made him sad “but it was necessary”, he said. “It’s a full-time job and I can’t do it anymore, I don’t want to do it anymore.”

In keeping with this institution, Barenboim will conduct two concerts with the Berlin State Opera Orchestra, Staatskapelle Berlin, later this month and hopes to present more. “I don’t need to aspire to that. I will,” he said.

Barenboim had her first live performance at age 7 in her native Argentina.

Her extraordinary biography is interwoven with much of 20th century geopolitical history, from her Jewish grandparents escaping Russian pogroms in the 1900s to her parents’ decision to settle in the new Jewish state of ‘Israel when he was about 10 years old, as his parents said. they wanted him to live “as part of a majority, not a minority”.

Barenboim first became aware of the persecution of the Jews on their way to Israel. His parents took him to Salzburg, for a master class, but they wouldn’t allow him to accept an invitation to play in Germany because the memory of the Holocaust was still fresh. She still struggles to understand why Austria, where Hitler was born and annexed by Nazi Germany, was accepted by her parents and not Germany.

Decades later, he can say Berlin has been his home for 30 years, and his work to revive the Berlin Staatsoper, located in what was once East Berlin, is widely credited with reviving cultural life in Germany after reunification.

Even in this historical context, Barenboim is concerned with today’s world. Putin’s war in Ukraine, which he does not understand. The situation in Israel. And the decision of some in the West to isolate Russian musicians, which he does not consider justified. “Not all Russians are anti-Ukraine,” he said.

“Let’s accept it. We don’t live in a very spiritual time today. The spiritual dimension has been reduced in every way,” Barenboim said. “I think it’s very sad and I hope it’s just a transition. I’ve known the world since the 1950s. For better or for worse, I’ve always been a very happy person to visit the universe. But it became very concrete, I think. Very suffocating.”

He believes people can find salvation in music, but many, even musicians, move too fast to appreciate it.

“People don’t know how to listen to music. They don’t need to know the complex technical details of composition. But you have to concentrate when you listen. You can’t see the phone or do anything else,” Barenboim said. “And I think you’re supposed to seek out that spiritual state that music can give you. It’s not something that comes on its own.”

Barenboim would continue to work with the West-Eastern Divan Orchestra (in Spanish Orquesta del Diván de Oriente y Occidente, a name inspired by a book of poems by Goethe) which he founded with the late Palestinian scholar Edward Said, whom he plans to conduct this summer in Salzburg and Lucerne, and the Barenboim-Said Music Academy in Berlin, which he founded in 2017.

The two organizations bring together musicians from historically hostile countries to foster dialogue.

Barenboim finds this level of cooperation exemplary, he is particularly impressed with the students of the academy. He recalled seeing a performance at the academy recently, with a Palestinian student on clarinet, an Ethiopian-Israeli student on first violin and a Syrian second violin, an Iranian on viola and a cellist Israeli.

“Seeing this quintet, with this mutual understanding, and what everyone is doing and contributing, was something that moved me,” he said, pausing to think. “Which means there is hope.”

Barenboim’s third concert in Milan on Saturday, featuring three Mozart symphonies, will be broadcast on La Scala’s new service, La Scala TV.