Daniel Barenboim Quotes & Sayings

I hope that my new status will be an example of Israeli-Palestinian co-existence, I believe that the destinies of the Israeli people and the Palestinian people are inextricably linked. — Daniel Barenboim

I have the greatest respect for the survivors of the Holocaust. We can't even imagine what these people went through. — Daniel Barenboim

The French Revolution gave us three ... powerful ideas, or concepts - liberty, equality and fraternity. But these ideas ... are not only right in themselves, but they are so because they come in the proper order. You cannot have equality without liberty, and you certainly cannot have fraternity without equality. The importance of this I learnt from music, because music evolves in time, and therefore the order inevitably determines the content. — Daniel Barenboim

European anti-Semitism goes much further back than to the partition of Palestine and the establishment of Israel in 1948. It even goes further back than the Holocaust. — Daniel Barenboim

The Barenboim Foundation has nothing to do with politics. — Daniel Barenboim

You can't expect someone born into a family with no music ... to understand when I'm conducting the Schoenberg Variations. — Daniel Barenboim

There are probably many people in Israel who believe that Wagner, who died in 1883, lived in Berlin in 1942 and was friends with Hitler. — Daniel Barenboim

I maintain music is not here to make us forget about life. It's also here to teach us about life: the fact that everything starts and ends, the fact that every sound is in danger of disappearing, the fact that everything is connected - the fact that we live and we die. — Daniel Barenboim

I can't stand going out to one more dinner with some Mrs. So-and-So who might leave a million dollars to the Chicago Symphony Orchestra when she dies. — Daniel Barenboim

Jewish intellectuals contributed a great deal to insure that Europe became a continent of humanism, and it is with these humanist ideals that Europe must now intervene in the Middle East conflict. — Daniel Barenboim

I would like to be a terrorist for music education - to make a complete reform, all over the world. — Daniel Barenboim

Not only has the eyes taken over, but we have anaesthetised the ears through all the muzak that we hear all the time. — Daniel Barenboim

For many people, music is here to let them forget the daily chores of life. — Daniel Barenboim

If a man dreams about sleeping with Marilyn Monroe, he's certainly entitled to that. But when he wakes up, he has to acknowledge that he is married to someone else. — Daniel Barenboim

In the beginning, there was silence. And out of the silence came the sound. The sound is not here. — Daniel Barenboim

But the ear, let us not forget, starts operating on the forty-fifth day of the pregnancy of a woman. Seven and a half months advance over the eye ... (but) what do we do in our society, in our civilisation, to continue this process? — Daniel Barenboim

Sound is often talked about in a very subjective way, as if it had a colour. This is a bright sound, this is a dark sound. I don't believe in that because I think that is much too subjective. — Daniel Barenboim

In times of totalitarian or autocratic rule, music (indeed culture in general) is often the only avenue of independent thought. It is the only way people can meet as equals, and exchange ideas. Culture then becomes primarily the voice of the oppressed and it takes over from politics as a driving force for change. — Daniel Barenboim

What the world is saying to us human beings is, 'Don't stick to the old ways, learn to think anew.' And that's what musicians do every day. — Daniel Barenboim

The ear plays the role of the guide in the museum in the concert I'm taking now. We don't have an oral guide, we have to provide it ourselves. One reason why active listening is absolutely essential. — Daniel Barenboim

I always maintain that playing in an orchestra intelligently is the best school for democracy. If you play a solo, the conductor and everybody in the orchestra follows you. Then, a few bars later, the main voice goes to another instrument, another group, and then you have to go back into the collective [sound]. The art of playing in an orchestra is being able to express yourself to the maximum but always in relation to something else that is going on. — Daniel Barenboim

An Israeli who thinks that his government is doing everything right wouldn't join the Divan Orchestra in the first place. — Daniel Barenboim

To have real knowledge, one must understand the essence of things and not only their manifestations. — Daniel Barenboim

Anti-Semitism has no historical, political and certainly no philosophical origins. Anti-Semitism is a disease. — Daniel Barenboim

Today, conducting is a question of ego: a lot of people believe they are actually playing the music. — Daniel Barenboim

Israel's strategy cannot be to constantly confront the Palestinians with the history of the Holocaust, but instead to show them that Israel is a reality. — Daniel Barenboim

Beethoven was a deeply political man in the broadest sense of the word. He was not interested in daily politics, but concerned with questions of moral behaviour and the larger questions of right and wrong affecting the entire society. — Daniel Barenboim

In the long term, Israel's security rests on only one pillar: the Palestinians' acceptance of the country. It isn't the atom bomb that makes Israel secure. — Daniel Barenboim

When playing music, it is possible to achieve a unique sense of peace. — Daniel Barenboim

The Germans are prisoners of their past. — Daniel Barenboim

Once you start playing a piece, there is a connection between every note. You cannot say, 'I will not concentrate on this note.' You cannot ignore things the way you do in the rest of your life. — Daniel Barenboim

Music means different things to different people and sometimes even different things to the same person at different moments of his life. — Daniel Barenboim

Beethoven's music tends to move from chaos to order, as if order were an imperative of human existence. — Daniel Barenboim

I'm sure that there are many Israelis who dream of waking up one day to find the Palestinians gone. And there are many Palestinians who dream of going to bed at night and waking up the next morning to find the Israelis gone. — Daniel Barenboim

US presidents can make all the commitments and declarations they want until they are blue in the face, in the Muslim world they will always be perceived as partisan. — Daniel Barenboim

Beethoven's importance in music has been principally defined by the revolutionary nature of his compositions. He freed music from hitherto prevailing conventions of harmony and structure. — Daniel Barenboim

Wagner exploited all forms of expression at a composer's disposal - harmony, dynamics, orchestration - to the extreme. His music is highly emotional, and at the same time Wagner has extraordinary control over the effect he achieves. — Daniel Barenboim

I have music in my brain all the time, all sorts. — Daniel Barenboim

I have heard Ori Kam on several occasions over the last few years and have always been deeply impressed with his playing. He possesses a rare combination of musical talent, technical facility, intelligence, and charisma, and he is undoubtedly one of the most extraordinary young artists I have heard in recent years. — Daniel Barenboim

The Steinway piano is such an incomparable instrument. Due to its virtues, I am able to express all my musical feelings. — Daniel Barenboim

In my mother's belly, I remember not liking the tempi my father played the Beethoven Sonatas in. — Daniel Barenboim

There are wonderful restaurants in London. I love Indian food and I like Arab food, and I go very often to the Arab restaurant Noura. — Daniel Barenboim

When you love somebody and they die young and you are young, too, it is very hard. — Daniel Barenboim

I love conducting. What I'm tired of is music administration. I don't want that. I just want to make music. — Daniel Barenboim

An hour of violin lessons in Berlin is an hour where you get the child interested in music. An hour in a violin lesson in Palestine is an hour away from violence, is an hour away from fundamentalism. — Daniel Barenboim

And in English you have this wonderful difference between listening and hearing, and that you can hear without listening, and you can listen and not hear. — Daniel Barenboim

It's funny, because in 1970 I met the Beatles quite by a chance at a party. It was the Beethoven bicentenary, and I was then also playing the Beethoven Sonatas. And that's all they wanted to hear about - I wanted to talk about them, and all they wanted to talk about was Beethoven. — Daniel Barenboim

Music has the capacity to create a greater reality. — Daniel Barenboim

The tempo is the suitcase. If the suitcase is too small, everything is completely wrinkled. If the tempo is too fast, everything becomes so scrambled you can't understand it. — Daniel Barenboim

Germany will never be a real, free thinking and free feeling friend of Israel, because it will always fall under this shadow. — Daniel Barenboim

I don't believe that the entire world is constantly anti-Semitic. — Daniel Barenboim

Tradition demands that we not speak poorly of the dead. — Daniel Barenboim

I liked very much when we lived in Hampstead. We would go for walks on the Heath. I liked it better than living in the centre of town. — Daniel Barenboim

It is always interesting and sometimes even important to have intimate knowledge of a composer's life, but it is not essential in order to understand the composer's works. — Daniel Barenboim

There are many types of silence. There is a silence before the note, there is a silence at the end and there is a silence in the middle. — Daniel Barenboim

Now the first step has to be taken, the step towards democracy. This step is full of risks, and requires trust on all sides. We don't know where it will lead. But if we just stand still, we will have no chance of escaping the violence. — Daniel Barenboim

I can't stand being in Chicago anymore and hearing the Brahms Violin Concerto in the elevator. Because that shows me that when they come to the concert hall they listen to it in the same way. — Daniel Barenboim