Explore Quotes by Daniel Barenboim

I believe education is much more important than we assume.

We need to take music out of the ivory tower - both for musicians and for the public. Otherwise, classical music will not survive the 21st century.

I feel that the Jews have always had a special connection to this part of the world, which in geographical terms was called Palestine for so many centuries.

In order to lift a certain object from the ground, we have to use energy. But then to sustain it at that level, we have to keep on adding energy, or otherwise, the object falls to the ground. It's exactly the same thing with the sound.

I think the most important thing for a listener is to realize that he, too, should not listen to music in a passive way; that if you sit in a concert hall and expect to be moved or taken off your seat by the music, it will not happen.

Of course there is really vile anti-Semitism in Wagner's writings, but I can't accept the idea that characters like Beckmesser and Alberich are Jewish stereotypes in disguise. Would Beckmesser be a court councillor if he was meant to be a Jewish stereotype? No Jew could occupy such a role.

The thing about Wagner is we're always wrong about him, because he always embraces opposites. There are things in his operas which viewed one way are naturalistic, and viewed another way are symbolic, but the problem is you can't represent both views on stage at once.

I get no satisfaction just showing myself in every corner of the world every week.

'Tristan' is a very unique case, not just in Wagner's output, but in music in general. It remains contemporary no matter what else surrounds it. There is something self-renewing about it.

Either you live by the barometer of the music critics, or you live by your own. I choose the latter.

More and more, we're used to taking things in through the eyes rather than through the ears, and opera is more of a spectacle.

I know so many Irish musicians. They're all over, because there has been so much emigration from Ireland. Like the Jews.

I think Sharon is anti-Israeli because it's in the interest of Israel to understand the problems of the other side.

I was never really interested in an operatic post, but I took on the Bastille because it seemed a unique opportunity to build an opera ensemble from scratch, and to deal with all the disciplines that go into opera - the music, the staging and the singing - in an interrelated way.

I have accumulated so many experiences, so much, that I want to be able to realize so many things. This is why I have basically given up most of my positions.

I don't like possessions.

I am permanently relaxed.

When I played my first concert with an orchestra, I was eight years old in Berlin.

The problem with listening to music today is that there's so much of it everywhere. We've got used to hearing music without actually listening to it.

In Arab culture, music is for celebration. You don't play music at funerals.

Beethoven was a deeply political man in the broadest sense of the word. He was not interested in daily politics, but concerned with questions of moral behaviour and the larger questions of right and wrong affecting the entire society.