Daniel Barenboim quotes

Daniel Barenboim is a renowned pianist and conductor, celebrated for his exceptional musical talent and influence. His career spans decades, bridging classical music traditions across Europe and the Middle East. He has also championed peace and cross-cultural understanding through numerous musical collaborations and initiatives. Here are 26 of his quotes:

Music has the capacity to create a greater reality.

Daniel Barenboim

I'm sure that there are many Israelis who dream of waking up one day to find the Palestinians gone. And there are many Palestinians who dream of going to bed at night and waking up the next morning to find the Israelis gone.

Daniel Barenboim

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.

Daniel Barenboim

I have the greatest respect for the survivors of the Holocaust. We can't even imagine what these people went through. And yet even they have differing positions ... I respect that there are survivors who can't, and certainly don't want to, listen to this music. But I don't accept that the fact that an orchestra playing Wagner in Tel Aviv or Jerusalem would do any harm to someone sitting in an apartment in Haifa.

Daniel Barenboim

An hour of violin lessons in Berlin is an hour where you get the child interested in music. An hour in a violin lesson in Palestine is an hour away from violence, is an hour away from fundamentalism.

Daniel Barenboim

Anti-Semitism has no historical, political and certainly no philosophical origins. Anti-Semitism is a disease.

Daniel Barenboim

Wagner exploited all forms of expression at a composer's disposal -- harmony, dynamics, orchestration -- to the extreme. His music is highly emotional, and at the same time Wagner has extraordinary control over the effect he achieves. That's why there is also something manipulative about Wagner's music, which is not to say that it's not honest. In fact, I believe that it's totally honest, but it also happens to be manipulative.

Daniel Barenboim

Now the first step has to be taken, the step towards democracy. This step is full of risks, and requires trust on all sides. We don't know where it will lead. But if we just stand still, we will have no chance of escaping the violence.

Daniel Barenboim

When playing music, it is possible to achieve a unique sense of peace.

Daniel Barenboim

There are many types of silence. There is a silence before the note, there is a silence at the end and there is a silence in the middle.

Daniel Barenboim

The tempo is the suitcase. If the suitcase is too small, everything is completely wrinkled. If the tempo is too fast, everything becomes so scrambled you can't understand it.

Daniel Barenboim

In the beginning, there was silence. And out of the silence came the sound. The sound is not here.

Daniel Barenboim

Jewish intellectuals contributed a great deal to insure that Europe became a continent of humanism, and it is with these humanist ideals that Europe must now intervene in the Middle East conflict.

Daniel Barenboim

US presidents can make all the commitments and declarations they want until they are blue in the face, in the Muslim world they will always be perceived as partisan.

Daniel Barenboim

Tradition demands that we not speak poorly of the dead.

Daniel Barenboim

I love conducting. What I'm tired of is music administration. I don't want that. I just want to make music.

Daniel Barenboim

It's funny, because in 1970 I met the Beatles quite by a chance at a party. It was the Beethoven bicentenary, and I was then also playing the Beethoven Sonatas. And that's all they wanted to hear about - I wanted to talk about them, and all they wanted to talk about was Beethoven.

Daniel Barenboim

Music is the art of the imaginary par excellence, an art free of all limits imposed by words, an art that touches the depth of human existence, and art of sounds that crosses all borders.

Daniel Barenboim

You can't expect someone born into a family with no music... to understand when I'm conducting the Schoenberg Variations.

Daniel Barenboim

Every great work of art has two faces, one toward its own time and one toward the future, toward eternity.

Daniel Barenboim

Sound is often talked about in a very subjective way, as if it had a colour. This is a bright sound, this is a dark sound. I don't believe in that because I think that is much too subjective.

Daniel Barenboim

What the world is saying to us human beings is, 'Don't stick to the old ways, learn to think anew.' And that's what musicians do every day.

Daniel Barenboim