Daniel Barenboim: a Life in Music.(Book Review)

by Daniel Barenboim Arcade, 240 pp. $25.95

Onetime piano wunderkind, now renowned maestro, Daniel Barenboim has thoroughly revised his 1991 autobiography (of the same title). Though busy with the Chicago Symphony and Berlin's Staatsoper, he did not simply add recent events to his story; he made significant modifications and wrote six new chapters.

This is not an autobiography in any usual sense. It is essentially non-chronological and skips over his personal life. Since he was married to the gifted cellist Jacqueline du Pre through her tragic illness and death, this rectitude may deter sensation-seekers. That's their loss, because in place of glib anecdotes or sentimentality, Barenboim offers fascinating, often profound rambles through his convictions, mostly musical, and the maturation process that formed them.

Barenboim's unique international background has yielded a sagacious artist who is as indebted to Aristotle as to George Szell. Amid his recollections and his insights into baton technique, dynamic contrasts and the demands of opera are interspersed his views on Middle East peace and the nature of history. But, he says, "Music constitutes [my, life's] essence," and music is the essence of the book, too.

"There is no division between musical and technical problems," he writes, and for him, ...