Daniel Barenboim is ill: he leaves the Berlin Opera
The world-famous conductor and pianist Daniele Barenboim80, has announced he will step down as general music director of theBerlin State Opera due to persistent health problems. “Unfortunately, my health has deteriorated and malfunctioned over the past year,” Barenboim said in a statement. “I can no longer deliver the performance rightly expected of a general music director.”
Born in Buenos Aires to Russian parents of Jewish ancestry, Barenboim also holds Israeli, Spanish and Palestinian citizenship. A very precocious pianist, he made his debut at the age of seven in his hometown and studied with maestro Vincenzo Scaramuzza. He perfected himself first with Claudio Arrau and then abroad in Rome, Salzburg, Paris and with Edwin Fischer in Lucerne. His international career as a pianist was accompanied by a brilliant career as a conductor, which represented the main part of his activity and led him to conduct the major orchestras of the world.
As a pianist, he is an established interpreter of Mozart, of which he has recorded the entire corpus of sonatas and concerts for piano and orchestra several times, as pianist and conductor, and of Beethoven, of which he has recorded all 32 sonatas. The January 1, 2022 he conducted the Vienna New Year’s Concert for the third time.