Daniel in the lion's den
The musical juxtaposition was remarkable. On Wednesday night, Daniel Barenboim had been conducting Elliott Carter’s debut opera, What Next?, at the Berlin Staatsoper. The following morning he was in the west of the city, at the dark, cramped Quasimodo jazz club, wearing his best battered jacket to play piano in an 11-piece band. He even beat out a solo on the piano lid. What next indeed?
Next month, Barenboim and his extempore band, which includes jazz superstar Don Byron, release Tribute to Ellington to mark the Duke’s centenary. They were at the Quasimodo club to rehearse for a gig that night at which they would showcase numbers from the album for the world’s press, a flotilla of TV cameras, the American ambassador (the only member of the audience guaranteed a seat), and a motley – if people clad exclusively in black can be motley – collection of Berlin’s artistic movers and shakers. As the band went through their paces, one observer remarked: “You wouldn’t have caught Von Karajan in a place like this.” He had a point.
Barenboim was there to rehearse – which he did with a mixture of intense concentration and evident enjoyment – but also to talk. After the rehearsal, he pulled together the German and French press and answered questions, jumping between the two languages, sometimes in the same sentence, without a pause, and telling an impenetrable Jewish joke to support one of his points. “He likes to tell parables,” said his personal assistant, perhaps raising his status a notch too far.
That night, the club was packed and noisy: no respectful Staatsoper-style audience this. The band rattled through the programme, stopping only for the occasional mineral water. Jazz buffs looked a little doubtful, and not just about the mineral water. The presence of arranger/conductor Cliff Colnot meant there was little scope for improvisation or adventure. It was a tight, scripted performance. They played the notes, whereas jazz usually happens between the notes; and Byron on clarinet and Larry Combs on sax stole the show.
Barenboim, who had never played jazz before embarking on the Ellington disc, appeared not to mind his demotion to band member, happy to listen to and learn from Byron and Combs. Some of the jazz aficionados were sniffy about his playing – it really don’t mean a thing if you ain’t got that swing – but that won’t bother him. These days, where criticism is concerned, Barenboim has a very thick skin.
But why did he do it? Why enter this unfamiliar territory, whose critical guardians are even harsher in their treatment of intruders than those in the classical world? The following morning, back on home ground at the Staatsoper Unter den Linden, just east of the Brandenburg Gate, he smiled, sat back in his chair, plucked at his braces, puffed a fat, stubby cigar, and tried to explain.
“I have always been interested in the music of the Americas. Jazz is the music that brings the three continents – Africa, America and Europe – together. Jazz is not something I grew up with, in the way that I grew up with the tango [Barenboim was born in Argentina and recently produced a tango record], but when I started going to Chicago in the 70s and went to jazz clubs, I became more interested.”
He is especially interested in Ellington because of the classical elements in his compositions. He says Ellington was taught by a pupil of Dvorak and that it is possible to trace harmonic similarities between their work. But there are great differences too and Barenboim admits the learning curve was a steep one. “It took me some time to find my way,” he says, relighting his troublesome cigar. “At first I was inflexible and heavy-handed, but I hope that isn’t how it sounds now. It was a fantastic learning experience for me. If the record is a success, I will be very happy, but even if there is some catastrophe and the record disappears, I will feel I have been greatly enriched by the experience.”
But how does the musical establishment feel about his nocturnal outing at the Quasimodo club? “I don’t know, nor do I care, frankly. If I had thought about the views of the establishment, I wouldn’t have done half the things I have in my life. I was told I couldn’t play the piano and conduct; then I was told I should not accompany Fischer-Dieskau, that a soloist should not step down to act as an accompanist; then I started conducting opera; then I did a tango record. All my life it was like this. People say, ‘Aren’t you afraid for your image?’ I say, ‘What image? My image is your problem, not mine.’ “
The cigar is now ablaze and Barenboim is warming to his theme. “I feel that, in the 50 years of my career, I have earned one thing: independence. I feel professionally completely free to do the things that are either important to me, interesting or amusing.” And in which category does the Ellington disc fall? “All three,” he says, after a pause.
Freedom, independence, the right to do as he pleases are themes to which Barenboim frequently returns. He likes to finish his wide-ranging, digressive but invariably coherent points; he does not welcome interruptions; he will not talk about his marriage to Jacqueline du Pré or the controversy over the recent film of her life – “I don’t believe in washing laundry in public”; and he will not be drawn on being passed over for the second time by the Berlin Philharmonic, which, in June, appointed Simon Rattle as its chief conductor. Close associates say Barenboim has mellowed in the 90s, and mostly he exudes good humour, but you feel it would be unwise to cross him: the Latin temperament which he admits to possessing could still explode.
Next year Barenboim will celebrate 50 years as a public performer. He made his debut as a soloist in Buenos Aires at the age of seven and next August will return to the same theatre to conduct. As well as a tour of South America, he plans a series of concerts at Carnegie Hall that will showcase his multi-faceted musical personality: a recital with Placido Domingo; three concerts with his US orchestra, the Chicago Symphony; the Schoenberg piano concerto with Pierre Boulez and the LSO; chamber music concerts with Itzhak Perlman, Pinchas Zukerman and Yo Yo Ma; a piano recital; and all the Beethoven symphonies with the Staatskapelle, the house band of the Staatsoper.
Barenboim’s energy is legendary and the range of his undertakings prodigious. As well as the Ellington disc, he has just recorded Fidelio with Domingo and the Beethoven symphonies with the Staatskapelle; and he is two-thirds of the way through a disc of Brazilian music. A recording of Wagner’s later operas beckons, as well as further forays into South American music and what he hopes will be more regular appearances as a pianist.
He is contracted to the Staatsoper until 2002, but says staying beyond that date will depend on being able to organise more time for playing and on continuing investment in the house. He believes he has helped restore its fortunes – it had suffered from insularity and underinvestment in the old East Germany – and does not intend to see standards slip because of the competition within Berlin for resources.
Barenboim, who at times in his career has been accused of moodiness, even megalomania, usually gets what he wants. His confidence and immunity from the barbs of criticism are evident. “Very early on, I played a concert in Buenos Aires,” he recalls. “There were at the time two newspapers of equal importance in the city. One said that not since Mozart had there been a child with so much talent. The other said that it was criminal to allow a child of eight to play in public, especially when the child was so totally devoid of musical talent. I remember my father showing me this periodically to remind me that in the end, the only way you can make progress is to be your own toughest critic.”
It is that confidence and his willingness to exercise his freedom that enables him to irritate concertgoers in Chicago with his commitment to contemporary works and to produce a programme at the Staatsoper that would be unthinkably adventurous at a British house. “The two most important things,” he says, “are curiosity and independence. Curiosity is more important than knowledge because curiosity leads you to knowledge, and independence is more important than power because independence allows you to do what you want to do. For me, to feel good means to feel independent.”
He lives in Berlin with his wife, the Russian-born pianist Elena Bashkirova, and two teenage sons. He speaks nine languages; even at home they have difficulty deciding between English, French and Russian. Not surprisingly, as a Jew born in Buenos Aires who has lived in the UK, France, the US and now Germany, he is fascinated by questions of identity and globalisation. He believes – perhaps he has to believe – that he can enter other worlds without losing his roots and his own identity.
He is a citizen of many states, but, he hopes, not stateless; he is eager to play in many styles, but not to lose the distinctive contours of each. “You have to be aware of the specifics of each thing. It’s like cooking. If you just mix things without understanding the properties of each ingredient, it will not taste good.” (He also talks of music being something that appeals to a person’s whole being – “brain, heart and stomach”. The culinary metaphors may be significant.) Barenboim has little time for those specialists who stick slavishly to an endless diet of Bach or Handel, invariably played on period instruments. “They fly Concorde,” he laughs, “but if they were true to their beliefs, they should travel everywhere in a horse and cart.” In the 90s he has increasingly espoused openness and adventure in music-making, and sought to “take away the protective skin of compartmentalisation”. He wants to tear down barriers in the same way that the tearing down of the Berlin wall made it possible for him to take the post of music director at the Staatsoper, a great opera house which had grown fusty and inward-looking.
“I hate ivory towers and everything that is narrow,” he says. He celebrates the freedoms and cross-fertilisation of the 90s and is eager to be part of it. “There is less fear of mixing things now, of losing identities,” he says. “That manifests itself in so many things – in music, in politics, in gastronomy, that you can get sushi in Berlin and good spaghetti in London. When I first went to London in 1954 it was roast beef and Yorkshire pudding, and tea at four, and that was it. Now look at it.”
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