Barenboim

Daniel Barenboim has sometimes performed the music of Debussy, especially during the later part of his career, but Debussy interpretations are not something for which he is particularly known. Thus this release of Debussy works, on the rare side except for La Mer at the end, is commendable; it shows Barenboim, approaching his 80th year, continuing to take chances and explore new repertory. The show opens with the Fantaisie for piano and orchestra, L 73, not commonly heard, although it is really Debussy's only piano concerto.

Antonin Dvořák's Cello Concerto in B minor, Op. 104 is a perennial audience favorite, and many cellists play and even record it with conductors with whom they may only have a passing acquaintance. The work is relatively forgiving of such treatment, with melodies, that once heard, reside in the mind forever and need only to be refreshed. However, there's room for more progressive treatments of the work, and this one is an example, with the young cellist Kian Soltani joining Daniel Barenboim and his well-drilled Staatskapelle Berlin. Soltani and Barenboim have worked together consistently; Soltani was the principal cellist in Barenboim's West-Eastern Divan Orchestra in the Middle East.

Both hailing from Buenos Aires, Argentina, pianists Martha Argerich and Daniel Barenboim are not only fellow countrymen; as child prodigies they both began to give concerts in their youth, as soloists and with an orchestra, and both have gone on to establish long, distinguished global careers as virtuoso pianists in addition to branching out to other equally distinguished activities of considerable and noteworthy impact within and outside the classical music world, including but not limited to for either or both, conducting, competition jurists, festival founders and humanitarian causes. In the musical realm, their particular, common interest in chamber music performance led these two musical eminences and ambassadors to concertize together, as seen here on EuroArts DVD offering Piano Duos, featuring works by Mozart, Schubert and Stravinsky.

Because Daniel Barenboim is so closely associated with the German orchestral repertoire, conducting the music of English composer Edward Elgar may seem a bit of a byway, though his explorations in previous Decca recordings of the Cello Concerto in E minor with Alisa Weilerstein, and the Symphony No. 2 in E flat major with the Staatskapelle Berlin, have yielded exceptional results. This performance of the Symphony No. 1 in A flat major (1908), again with the Staatskapelle Berlin, is a powerful meditation on the human drama, and while it lacks a specific program, the music evokes a mixture of bittersweet nostalgia and darker forebodings.

Pianist/Conductor Barenboim continues his 2020 Beethoven Journey with a complete recording of Piano Trios. "There is a lack of equality in this world. For only if everyone were equal there would be no conflicts", he says. Equal standing is also indispensable for the piano trios of Beethoven, whom he's always regarded as one of the most important composers. Performed w/ Michael Barenboim & Kian Soltani, who were shaped as concertmaster and principal cellist of the West-Eastern Divan Orchestra.

This legendary Bayreuth Festival production of Wagner’s 'Der Ring des Nibelungen', directed by Harry Kupfer, with designs by Hans Schavernoch, and conducted by Daniel Barenboim, is considered perhaps the finest video recording of these four operas ever made. For their innovative modernist staging, Kupfer and his team turned away from the work’s time of origin and located The Ring at a “road of history”, a meeting-place of past, present and future, which sets the scene for the story’s struggles of power and love. Barenboim’s authoritative yet highly responsive reading of the immense score and the extraordinary performances of the cast help to make this a truly memorable Ring.

Otto Klemperer's Beethoven is one of the towering achievements in the history of recordings. By today's standards, these performances are hopelessly old-fashioned: dark, heavy, and frequently very slow. But they are also the grandest, most unsentimental, most purposeful versions in the catalog.

This legendary Bayreuth Festival production of Wagner’s 'Der Ring des Nibelungen', directed by Harry Kupfer, with designs by Hans Schavernoch, and conducted by Daniel Barenboim, is considered perhaps the finest video recording of these four operas ever made. For their innovative modernist staging, Kupfer and his team turned away from the work’s time of origin and located The Ring at a “road of history”, a meeting-place of past, present and future, which sets the scene for the story’s struggles of power and love. Barenboim’s authoritative yet highly responsive reading of the immense score and the extraordinary performances of the cast help to make this a truly memorable Ring.

This legendary Bayreuth Festival production of Wagner’s 'Der Ring des Nibelungen', directed by Harry Kupfer, with designs by Hans Schavernoch, and conducted by Daniel Barenboim, is considered perhaps the finest video recording of these four operas ever made. For their innovative modernist staging, Kupfer and his team turned away from the work’s time of origin and located The Ring at a “road of history”, a meeting-place of past, present and future, which sets the scene for the story’s struggles of power and love. Barenboim’s authoritative yet highly responsive reading of the immense score and the extraordinary performances of the cast help to make this a truly memorable Ring.