Perhaps those who came for the Argerich touch and left at the interval of this instant-sellout Prom were satisfied. After all, the legendary Argentinian pianist gave us some vintage minutes of her silk-spinning mercurialism. Yet it was in the midst of a performance that wasn't exactly an ideal concerto partnership with long-term colleague Daniel Barenboim and the young players of the West-Eastern Divan Orchestra, who deserved better from her. Had the pianomanes stayed, they might have discovered that Lutosławski's Concerto for Orchestra is a scintillating masterpiece, though its colossal last Read more ...

The days are long gone when a Proms gig by Daniel Barenboim and his West-Eastern Divan Orchestra felt like a life-changing visitation by a major prophet. Expectations of the ensemble he and the scholar-writer Edward Said founded in 1999 to encourage young Arab, Israeli and (later) Mediterranean-region musicians to work, and play, together have contracted on the political front. Meanwhile, WEDO’s purely musical scope and ambition has never ceased to grow. Now, a WEDO event feels (almost) like a normal Proms night at the Royal Albert Hall, although a special warmth – bordering on reverence – Read more ...

A legendary name and the chance to change the face of a cruel condition set the stakes high for what Prince Charles, in his programme preface for this Southbank spectacular, told us was called the Stop MS Jacqueline du Pré Tribute Concert. There she was on the screen (and in excellent sound) before any players appeared on stage, the vital cellist whose career was cut short, being celebrated by, among others, John Barbirolli for the splendid emotional excess of youth and by her husband Daniel Barenboim for the way she would hold a conversation in everything, the perfect chamber player. Those Read more ...

Daniel Barenboim is as distinctive as he is unpredictable. His considerable strengths – dynamism, passion, keen intellectual engagement – are balanced by some notable weaknesses – clunky tempo changes, lack of detail – but all configure differently in each performance. This Prom was a success largely for the fresh perspectives he brought to Mozart and Bruckner, both composers prone to stiffness and formality from less adventurous performers.If the Mozart was the less successful, it was because Barenboim seemed to take his ideas too far, always working just outside the bounds of classical Read more ...

It's not so long since Daniel Barenboim sat around a table with Israeli officials telling him that Wagner couldn't be played in the homeland when someone's mobile fanfared the "Ride of the Valkyries", demolishing the opposition's case. At the opposite end of the scale to all that flash of battle-lust came last night's unexpected first encore to a Wagner second half – the Act Three Prelude to Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg. It foreshadows opera's most humanistic monologue, in which a deep thinking man of the people bewails the folly and delusion which so quickly knock civilization off course Read more ...

The memories were flooding back last night. Daniel Barenboim's speech after the concert, lasting about a quarter of an hour, contained vivid recollections of his first appearance on that stage in 1956 as a 13-year-old (playing the Mozart A major Concerto with the RPO and Josef Krips). There was a welling-up of emotion as he summoned back memories of the RFH stage from his time living in London: “I remember Jacqueline...Barbirolli.” And a decade with the English Chamber Orchestra. “Don't tell anybody in the orchestra: I was learning my trade.”The speech ranged wider too. There was a story of Read more ...

“You don’t love Schubert’s music?” Such, according to the greatest of living Schubert interpreters Elisabeth Leonskaja, was the response of her mentor Sviatoslav Richter to students who omitted the exposition repeats in the piano sonatas. Daniel Barenboim doesn’t observe them either, on the evidence of yesterday afternoon's concert, but four recitals and much in them ought to prove that he does love Schubert’s music, or rather has his own vision of how it ought to go. It’s not his fault if focus on the composer seems to have taken second place to the public's media-fed fascination with Read more ...

Personality is essential for Schubert’s piano sonatas. Listen to two recordings of the same one and you could easily think they are different works, such is the performer's input. Daniel Barenboim would therefore seem ideal. He’s a huge personality – he even has his own name emblazoned in large gold letters on the lid of his piano: a personality verging on a cult. But it’s not quite right for this music.Barenboim always trades in big passions; Schubert does not – or only in late works, and even then not exclusively. To negotiate the more delicate music of the early B major Sonata, D575, Read more ...

It’s not often that you arrive for a piano recital to see members of the audience on the stage, clustering around the instrument and taking photos of it. Those curious about the newly unveiled, straight-strung Barenboim-Maene concert grand (the name above the keyboard is simply BARENBOIM) were periodically ushered away from it; it was closed and reopened several times before it was time for the maestro himself to take control.The first event in Daniel Barenboim’s four recitals of Schubert sonatas involved several component parts that added up to a distinctly odd evening. Let’s dispatch one Read more ...

Gasps of surprise were heard across the country last month, when Richard Morrison on BBC Radio 3's "Building a Library" announced Daniel Barenboim and the Staatskapelle Berlin as his library choice for Elgar’s Second Symphony. That recommendation proved timely for the conductor and his orchestra, who yesterday completed their short London residency with the same symphony. The performance demonstrated a genuine intimacy with Elgar’s music. Enthusiasm as well, perhaps to excess, with many cherished details overpowered. An evening of passionate music-making, though, with real emotional Read more ...

It looked like a potential misalliance between performers used to looking at the stars and a programme of earthly, ideally rather broadly humorous delights. In the event, Martha Argerich, who can turn her high, lucid playing to most ends, sought out a sharp-edged wit if not a relaxed warmth in Beethoven’s First Piano Concerto. The real magic came later in the first half. But in the second, Daniel Barenboim seemed to have a very strange concept indeed of Strauss’s Ein Heldenleben (A Hero’s Life), a work which can seem oddly repellent without lashings of exuberant epic parody – there was Read more ...

 Brahms: The Violin Sonatas Corey Cerovsek (violin), Paavali Jumppanen (piano) (Milanollo)Listening to Brahms's chamber music in hefty doses is good for the soul. The symphonies and concertos are weighty, rich creations – magnificent in their own way, but easily rendered cumbersome and indigestible when performed badly. Whereas it's hard to think of a single Brahms chamber work that doesn't tick all the boxes. Listening to the three mature violin sonatas should be an inspiring, enjoyable experience. And so it is on this disc. Corey Cerovsek's warm sound suits this music to perfection, Read more ...