The Jewish pianist, conductor and political commentator Daniel Barenboim will be 80 years old next November. And he is now beginning his birthday year just as restlessly as he has lived and made music for the past 71 years. Even if back problems recently forced him to cancel concerts, even if, that was a long time ago, he was slowed down by an eye operation. But Barenboim cannot do without a stage. The musician, who was born in Argentina and grew up in Israel, will celebrate a 40th anniversary in Berlin next year; since 1992 he has been the music director of the Staatsoper Unter den Linden and its Staatskapelle. Thanks in part to Barenboim, Berlin is a music capital, where he built the Staatskapelle into a second world class ensemble alongside the Berlin Philharmonic. In addition, Barenboim’s openness to the world stands against the city’s entanglement in National Socialism, the musician is also a controversial partisan for the reconciliation between Jews and Palestinians. And and and.
Daniel Barenboim has big plans for the new year, including an evening for UN refugee aid
For Barenboim, the new year begins with a concert marathon. He conducts the Berliner Philharmoniker and then goes on a European tour with his Staatskapelle and the four symphonies by Robert Schumann. It still looks as if all of these concerts could take place in front of an audience. But health policy restrictions in the cultural sector are currently often surprising for everyone involved and at short notice.
Barenboim’s first planned appearance in the New Year is the most prestigious classical music event in the world, the New Year’s Concert hosted by the Vienna Philharmonic. It is so famous because the seemingly endless series of Viennese waltzes presented there, excellently composed by representatives of the Strauss family, is broadcast on TV from the legendary Wiener Musikvereinssaal in more than 90 countries. No other classic event therefore has more viewers, around 50 million. These New Year’s concerts go back to a benefit New Year’s Eve concert in 1939 during the Hitler dictatorship. Until 1986 only four conductors (Clemens Krauss, Josef Krips, Willi Boskovsky and Lorin Maazel) conducted the New Year’s concerts. Since then, internationally known conductors have alternated annually, some of them were allowed to do so more often: Nikolaus Harnoncourt, Herbert von Karajan, Riccardo Muti, Carlos Kleiber, Zubin Mehta, Mariss Jansons.
It will be exciting. Because the Vienna Philharmonic have their own ideas about New Year’s dance
Daniel Barenboim is now conducting his third New Year’s concert after 2009 and 2014. But Barenboim does not come from the Viennese Waltz Vienna, but from the tango metropolis Buenos Aires. Except for the fact that Tango and Waltz use their meter (three-quarters and two-quarters time) in a refined and idiosyncratic manner, these dances have nothing in common. That makes tango like waltzes to dances on the volcano – for musicians and dancers who immerse themselves deeply in the respective musical cultures. Just listen to the always curious Latvian-German violinist Gidon Kremer with his approaches to the Argentine composer Astor Piazzolla. The result is a fascinating artifact, which is exactly the 11,800 kilometers from tango that separates Vienna from Buenos Aires.
It’s a lot easier with the Vienna New Year’s Waltz. Because the Vienna Philharmonic, which may well consider itself to be one of the world’s best orchestras, can do almost everything, but not one thing: play the Viennese waltz differently than in the time of Johann Strauss, i.e. with the blurring of sensuality, wine taverns, malice and humiliation between the second and third quarter notes of each bar, which must be played with fanatically precise understatement. This is what the Vienna Philharmonic can do in one way and no other. Which is why, sorry to Daniel Barenboim, it doesn’t really matter who conducts them.