1 min read
I think I might have made a mistake. The reviews of Daniel Barenboim's Beethoven cycle have been uniformly ecstatic. And the buzz has been clear that the series has been something very special. (Have a look at Intermezzo, one of my favourite sites, for some excellent and really informative reviews.)
I have long since dismissed Barenboim as a pianist. I have simply been to too many recitals of his and gone away having felt as if he'd been slapdash and arrogant - too many wrong notes, too little care and too much of a 'one for the bank' air about the event. (Much like too many of the Vienna Philharmonic's concerts here or, worst of all, the St Petersburg PO's shocking touring concerts.) I kept going back for one more try and finally came to the conclusion that, fine conductor as he now is, his piano recitals were a waste of everyone's time - and money.
Jessica Duchen raves today about his 1960s set of Beethoven Sonatas: I learned all the Beethoven sonatas - by ear - as an insomniac teenage piano-nut with a turntable, headphones and the LPs of Barenboim's Complete Beethoven Sonatas on EMI, recorded back in the late 1960s. Our Danny was in his twenties. They are stupendous. When I wasn't listening to him, I was listening to Schnabel, who was also revelatory - but it was Barenboim who grabbed the imagination's heart-strings from note no.1; somehow one sensed his identification with every aspect of Beethoven, from the profound mysticism to the humour, from the personal tragedy to the great humanitarian idealism. And now, if Beethoven is the most idealistic composer who ever lived, he could have no better match than Barenboim. Yes, yes. Barenboim was indeed a stupendous pianist. But in my - extensive - experience of his playing now, was is the operative word.