Schoenberg/Beethoven/Tchaikovsky: West-Eastern Divan/Barenboim *****
Royal Albert Hall, 18th August 2015
“Let me play the lion too.” I hadn’t associated Daniel Barenboim with Nick Bottom from A Midsummer Night’s Dream before, but during Beethoven’s Triple Concerto, with the maestro urgently directing his beloved West-Eastern Divan Orchestra from the piano, he gazed towards his fellow soloists with such wonderment that I half expected him to leap from his stool and play the violin and cello parts too. Wonderment is the right word. It’s not just that Barenboim, at 72, is indefatigable, but that there is a sense of exploration in his music-making – and a delight in the music-making of his colleagues.
Daniel Barenboim
© BBC | Chris Christodoulou
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