Any conductor who tells you that if he is approached for the directorship of the Chicago Symphony that he’s not interested in it, you know perfectly well he’s lying. Daniel Barenboim Read Quote
The thing about Wagner is we’re always wrong about him, because he always embraces opposites. There are things in his operas which viewed one way are naturalistic, and viewed another way are symbolic, but the problem is you can’t represent both views on stage at once. Daniel Barenboim Read Quote
Of course there is really vile anti-Semitism in Wagner’s writings, but I can’t accept the idea that characters like Beckmesser and Alberich are Jewish stereotypes in disguise. Would Beckmesser be a court councillor if he was meant to be a Jewish stereotype? No Jew could occupy such a role. Daniel Barenboim Read Quote
Wagner is contrapuntal in a philosophical way as well as a musical way. What I mean by that is that every tendency has its opposite, and you see that in the man himself. He’s a metaphysical hermaphrodite – he embraces hard and soft, masculine and feminine. Daniel Barenboim Read Quote
You have to really have the will to hang onto the first note as it is being played, and then really stay with it and take the flight, as it were, you know, for the duration of the piece. Daniel Barenboim Read Quote
You don’t go out and play Beethoven’s ‘Opus 111’ without having rethought about it every time you play. Daniel Barenboim Read Quote
In order to lift a certain object from the ground, we have to use energy. But then to sustain it at that level, we have to keep on adding energy, or otherwise, the object falls to the ground. It’s exactly the same thing with the sound. Daniel Barenboim Read Quote
When we talk about music, we talk about our reaction to it. One person might say that music is so poetic, while another says it’s all mathematics. Yet another might say it’s about sensuality, and so on. That’s all true. But music is not just one of these things. It’s everything all at once. Daniel Barenboim Read Quote
