Martha Argerich / Michael Barenboim / Kian Soltani / Staatskapelle Berlin / Daniel Barenboim CLAUDE DEBUSSY

 

CLAUDE DEBUSSY

 

Daniel Barenboim / Michael Barenboim / Kian Soltani BEETHOVEN Piano Trios

 

PIANO TRIOS

 

Daniel Barenboim / Michael Barenboim / Kian Soltani MOZART Piano Trios

Deutsche Grammophon releases Daniel Barenboim’s latest album, Mozart: Piano Trios, featuring Kian Soltani (cello) and Michael Barenboim (violin).

In the album’s program notes, Artistic Director of Mozartwoche and acclaimed tenor Rolando Villazón shares:

“There is a delicious combination of mastery and innocence in their interpretation, the music is Mozart’s, they have stolen it from him with great respect, and now it is theirs.”

Daniel Barenboim / Michael Barenboim / Yulia Deyneka / Kian Soltani MOZART Piano Quartets

Daniel Barenboim has signed a new and exclusive contract with Deutsche Grammophon.

He will work with the Staatskapelle Berlin, the Staatsoper unter den Linden, the Boulez Ensemble and members of the Barenboim-Said Akademie, with many recording sessions taking place in the the Boulez Saal.

DG will develop three distinct recording series, focusing on Barenboim as pianist and conductor, chamber musician, and ‘educator and innovator’. The latter will take the form of digital-only releases on Barenboim’s own label, Peral Music, and will be complemented by social media campaigns, a strong YouTube presence and programmes for children’s television; Barenboim will appear as a character in Max & Maestro, a 52-part cartoon series co-produced by RAI, France Television and ARD-HR, in which he introduces 11-year-old rapper Max to classical music.

Two physical albums are set for release this summer: a Brahms symphony cycle with the Staatskapelle Berlin, and Mozart’s two piano quartets with Michael Barenboim, Kian Soltani and Yulia Deyneka.

Future albums include Dvořák’s cello concerto with Kian Soltani and the Staatskapelle Berlin, and Smetana’s Má Vlast with the Wiener Philharmoniker. There are also plans to mark Beethoven’s 250th anniversary in 2020 with major releases featuring such leading artists as Anne-Sophie Mutter and Yo-Yo Ma.

Barenboim said he believed the new relationship would help to introduce ‘the philosophy of the Pierre Boulez Saal, with its vision of the “thinking ear” and of active, engaged listening, to a large new audience.’

Michael Barenboim / Daniel Barenboim / Wiener Philharmoniker / Pierre Boulez SCHOENBERG Violin & Piano Concerti

Peral Music—Daniel Barenboim’s digital record label “for the thinking ear”—is proud to release the Vienna Philharmonic’s debut recordings of Arnold Schoenberg’s Violin Concerto and Piano Concerto, featuring the iconic composer and conductor Pierre Boulez, pianist and conductor Daniel Barenboim, and violinist Michael Barenboim. The new release captures the esteemed Vienna Philharmonic’s first performances of both works.

Dating from 2005 and 2012, these are the Vienna Philharmonic’s first recordings of two of Schoenberg’s works: the Piano Concerto with Daniel Barenboim under Pierre Boulez and the Violin Concerto with Michael Barenboim under the direction of his father.

The Vienna Philharmonic has enjoyed a close bond with Schoenberg’s music, since he himself conducted two performances of his Gurre-Lieder in 1920 and afterwards wrote a personal letter of thanks, expressing his gratitude to the musicians for their work together. Since then there have been more than 100 performances of his works, and the orchestra even played an important part in the foundation of the Arnold Schoenberg Center in Vienna in 1998.

It is all the harder to believe that the Vienna Philharmonic had never previously played either of these two works. For Daniel Barenboim the orchestra’s performances of Schoenberg’s music are full of “tenderness, good-natured informality and naturalness.” Their “playing is very much inspired by the venue.”

This makes it all the more inconceivable that these works by arguably the greatest composer of the 20th century, and a native of Vienna to boot, had been overlooked by the orchestra for so many years.

It was not until 2005 that Pierre Boulez conducted the Vienna Philharmonic’s first performance of Schoenberg’s Piano Concerto, when the soloist was Daniel Barenboim. Seven years later Barenboim returned with his son Michael and the two of them gave the first performance of Schoenberg’s Violin Concerto op. 36 with the orchestra. “Highly explosive music,” Michael Barenboim describes Schoenberg’s piece: “Every bar is aflame.” The work’s difficulties are plain. When it received its first performance in 1940, the composer’s daughter, Gertrud Greissle, remarked that “The difficulties are not purely intentional, but they are unavoidable.” Even today the virtuosity of Schoenberg’s Violin Concerto instils a sense of awe in many violinists. For a time Jascha Heifetz regarded the work as unplayable.

But for Barenboim, “Where other orchestras wrestle with the difficulties, the Viennese may do so as well, but they then discover themselves in the music, and this is really wonderful.”

West-Eastern Divan Orchestra / Daniel Barenboim HOMMAGE À BOULEZ

The West-Eastern Divan Orchestra and co-founder Daniel Barenboim release Hommage à Boulez, a tribute to longtime collaborator Pierre Boulez. The album features a selection of the composer/conductor’s most iconic works.

The recording captures two live performances, at Boulez’s 85th birthday celebration in 2010 and at the BBC Proms in 2012. Barenboim conducts the Divan, and Boulez leads members of the orchestra alongside Hilary Summers in his Le Marteau sans maître.

Boulez was the first musician invited by Barenboim to share in conducting the West-Eastern Divan Orchestra.