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Daniel Barenboim - Schumann: The Symphonies with Berlin Staatskapelle is the WFMT: Featured New Release

Deutsche Grammophon is proud to be honouring the supreme artistry of Daniel Barenboim on his 80th birthday TODAY 15 November. The great pianist and conductor’s remarkable legacy of recordings for the Yellow Label remains the focus of a major campaign comprising three albums, two DG Stage concerts and a series of e-video releases. DG has released Barenboim’s latest readings of Schumann’s four symphonies, recorded live with the Staatskapelle Berlin over three evenings at the Staatsoper Berlin and Philharmonie Berlin. The album will be available as a 3-CD set and in digital format, including a Dolby Atmos version.
 
“I am grateful that Deutsche Grammophon has chosen to mark the year of my 80th birthday with recent performances as well as an album made during my early years with the label,” comments Daniel Barenboim. “I believe these recordings show how music exists as a world in itself, never the same twice, always changing, no matter how many times we perform a particular composition. This is the great privilege of being a musician, the chance to learn new things every time we play the same piece. And it’s a further privilege to be able to share this experience with audiences.”
 
The tribute began in January 2022 with two concerts streamed on DG Stage. The first saw Daniel Barenboim and his childhood friend Martha Argerich present a programme of piano duos, while the second featured a performance of Beethoven’s Triple Concerto given to mark the 20th anniversary of the West-Eastern Divan Orchestra – the groundbreaking ensemble the maestro co-founded with Edward Said in 1999 to promote intercultural dialogue. Barenboim was joined by Anne-Sophie Mutter and Yo-Yo Ma as he directed the orchestra from the piano.
 
These were followed in May by the release of a brand-new selection of the pianist’s favourite encores. Specially recorded in Barenboim’s Pierre Boulez Saal in Berlin, Encores features miniature masterpieces by Albéniz, Chopin, Debussy, Liszt, Schubert and Schumann. These six composers, long close to Barenboim’s heart, give an idea of the sheer variety of his vast repertoire, and each piece is conveyed in his inimitably idiomatic and communicative style. Encores was followed in July by the reissue of his sublime interpretations of Mendelssohn’s Lieder ohne Worte (“Songs Without Words”), which originally came out in 1974 as a 3-LP set. An outstanding trilogy of anniversary-year releases will be rounded off on 4 November with the issue of the Schumann Symphonies album.
 
In July 1972, Daniel Barenboim signed a contract to make a dozen albums for Deutsche Grammophon. His first recordings for the label included a selection of Brahms piano works and Bruckner’s Symphony No. 4 with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra. Over the next two decades he built the foundations of a remarkable catalogue for the Yellow Label, including landmark recordings of Wolf’s Mörike-Lieder and Schubert’s Winterreise with the legendary baritone Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau; the symphonies of Schumann and Bruckner with the CSO; Debussy orchestral works with the Orchestre de Paris; works for violin and orchestra by Lalo and Berlioz with Itzhak Perlman; Schumann’s Piano Concerto with Arturo Benedetti Michelangeli; music by Alban Berg with Pinchas Zukerman and Pierre Boulez; and the first of two cycles for DG of Beethoven’s complete piano sonatas. The second was recorded during lockdown in 2020, Barenboim having signed a new exclusive contract with DG in 2018.
 
His very first recordings, made in the 1950s and early 1960s for the Westminster and Command labels, have been reissued by the Yellow Label. A still growing DG discography therefore also now includes important early interpretations from a pianist whose first public performance, given when he was just seven, was greeted with a lengthy standing ovation. Legend has it that after playing seven encores, the little boy went back on stage one last time and said to the audience, “I’m sorry, I’ve played everything I can!”
 
Since then, the multi-award-winning Barenboim has proved there is nothing he cannot do in the world of music. As noted by Opera Now, “He’s one of the most versatile cultural figures of our time.” Not only an acclaimed soloist and a conductor as much at home in the opera house as he is on the concert stage, he is a dedicated chamber musician, performing and recording with old friends such as Martha Argerich, Yo-Yo Ma and Anne-Sophie Mutter, and younger virtuosos such as Kian Soltani or his violinist son Michael.
 
He is also a respected speaker, peace activist and champion of music education, whose long list of honours now also includes the prestigious Gramophone Lifetime Achievement Award. In a special video tribute to Barenboim played at the awards ceremony in London on 5 October, an array of his fellow artists sent messages to him, with Sir Simon Rattle calling him “the personification of lifetime achievement” and Sir Antonio Pappano ending his homage with the simple words “You’re the tops!”.
 
“We are truly privileged to work with Daniel Barenboim at the heart of the Yellow Label,” says Dr Clemens Trautmann, President Deutsche Grammophon. “The intellectual curiosity, spiritual insights and mature artistry of his music-making deserve every accolade, as does his work as a humanitarian, educator, innovator and passionate advocate for music as a force for good in the world. During this anniversary year, we have presented multiple facets of his creative work, ranging from a reissue of one of his earliest recordings for DG to the brand-new Schumann symphony cycle with the Staatskapelle Berlin, as well as the piano encores album made at the Pierre Boulez Saal, his pioneering centre for the promotion of cultural exchange and dialogue in Berlin. On behalf of everyone at Deutsche Grammophon, I should like to wish the Maestro a very happy and peaceful 80th birthday.”


Foe November 15, 2022, Daniel Barenboim Schumann: The Symphonies with Berlin Staatskapelle is the WFMT: Chicago 'Featured New Release.' WFMT writes…Deutsche Grammophon honors the supreme artistry of Daniel Barenboim on his 80th birthday. The great pianist and conductor’s remarkable legacy of recordings for the label remains the focus of a major campaign comprising three albums, two DG Stage concerts, and a series of e-video releases. The first release holds his latest readings of Schumann’s four symphonies, recorded live with the Berlin Staatskapelle over three evenings at the Staatsoper and Philharmonie in Berlin.