Barenboim

Daniel Barenboim is an expert in exploiting the impact of cyclical performances of composers works: This time he focuses his sharp intellect on all six of Anton Bruckners mature symphonies. Der Tagesspiegel described Barenboim's performance of the works with the Staatskapelle Berlin on six nearly consecutive evenings in June 2010 as a superhuman accomplishment and went on to praise how: His Bruckner is conceived and performed very theatrically, like an opera without words.

As always, the challenge presented by this most traditional of concerts is to balance coherent and thoughtful exploration of the less familiar items in the catalog of 19th-century Straussian, Austrian, and central-European popular music with fresh readings of the chestnuts, including, of course, the obligatory last two encores on the program. In this case, Barenboim guides his audience, appropriately, through a travelogue of the Mediterranean and the East. Remarkably, 2009 marked the first time that Daniel Barenboim had ever been invited to conduct this event, perhaps a reminder of how seldom his commitments to Berlin and Chicago have allowed him to appear in this most southern of Austrian cities.

On October 25, Peral Music releases its latest album, celebrating twenty years of the West-Eastern Divan Orchestra. In August 1999, Daniel Barenboim and Edward Said founded the West-Eastern Divan Orchestra as a workshop for Israeli, Palestinian, and other Arab musicians to promote coexistence and intercultural dialogue. In order to celebrate this significant anniversary, Peral Music releases a digital album featuring “Don Quixote” (Richard Strauss) with cellist Kian Soltani and the famous “Boléro”(Maurice Ravel).