Watch: Barenboim plays Schubert at Jacques Chirac’s funeral
mainOvercome by the occasion, he suffers a memory lapse at 2:29 and quickly recovers.
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A pity Jacques Loussier didn’t make it.
Terrible playing , even students play better , what a shame for Schubert and for all people present ( alive and dead )
Why?i rather think it is a very romantic playing.
As for the people present….how many knwo something about Schubert or piano all together???
Apart from president Macron who,I read,is a piano player ;no matter how good or bad he might be.
Others are spectators only.
That no one gets it is not the point at all. I think he simply assumed he remembered it-he didn’t-and it was just sloppy playing by a fine artist.
Daniel Barenboim is proof that all that rhetoric by Shinichi Suzuki and José Antonio Abreu that playing beautiful music will make us better human beings is nothing but a lie. Barenboim is a great pianist and conductor, and yet he is one of the most odious, arrogant and horrible human beings that I have ever had the displeasure of working with. I really enjoyed watching him murder this Schubert impromptu at 02:26.
Murder is the appropriate description.
What a shame,your only comments were smotherd in hate. May God see past all of that and may he bless your soul.
“God”? Allow me to laugh in your face as you invoke some imaginary force to feel morally superior to other people.
What made you so happy about the unquestionably terrible playing around 2:26?
Amen.
DB attempts to make music as a peace treaty are clueless ,as I wrote in another post in the moderator’s website.I agree with that.
As for his arrogance…I would say (not knowing him personnaly) that he has a lot of pride of himself!!!
Dulcet tones and wrong notes for a corrupt politician.
Memory lapse? Maybe just overcome by not having looked at it before sitting down to play it.
DB does not need any practicing at all…
he can play any concertos,any sonatas..anything at any moment…extraordinary memory..but he is getting old I guess.
Huh? Your comment is bizarre.
==Overcome by the occasion, he suffers a memory lapse
No, it’s because he never, ever practises.
His last Beethoven sonata cycle in London had fistfuls of wrong notes and a couple of places where he lost his way
Presumably he must practice, but not enough? Does anyone know, genuinely, how much he actually does practice. I’d be genuinely interested.
His dear friend and “soul mate” Edward Said once told me (and a group of people) that Barenboim doesn’t practice. We laughed, like you, but he insisted: “no, he really does not practice. Hardly at all. I don’t know why.”
I noticed back several years back that Barenboim was spending more time on the podium and politiking than practicing. Alliteration intended.
As someone who paid a LOT of money to hear him lose his way in many major pieces, I would suggest he doesn’t practice or study his scores. If he does, I certainly haven’t heard (or seen) the evidence.
I don’t think he does practicing:too heavy a schedule he has!!
I see the critics are ouh today and as usual thry are unconcered with the greatness of the music and the composer. But no one has given a damn about the composer for the past 50 years
Horrible playing – not just the memory lapse but the amateurish pedalling . Embarrassing
Death is unfair.
The murderous thug Stalin had Sviatoslav Richter playing at his funeral and the great Chrirac had the long past-it, non-practising Barenboim.
A nasty performance.
One could argue he’s just like the late Horowitz who often showed such mannerisms.
Daniel Horrorwitz…
Es war aber leider kein Witz.
Dafür aber doch ein Horror.
Genau.
Comparing Barenboim to Horowitz is like comparing your neighborhood “working girl” to Sophia Lauren …
Ouch!
Requiescat in pace, of course, but if ever the Dies irae needs to be sung in the course of the obsequies, this was the occasion for it.
The Barenboim performance was imposed on the Archdiocese by the friendly people in government– there really is no place in a funeral Mass for a celebrity pianist doing the State a favor; I imagine that M. Barenboim’s guardian angel was trying to do him a good turn but, as is so often the case for all of us, alas, he ignored the prompt.
A wonder he didn’t give everyone a lecture on how they should run the country like he did at the Prom concert the other year!
Dreadful that Chirac, the promoter and instigator of abortion law in France, should be permitted a Catholic funeral.
Excruciating.
Poor Jacques Chirac. He deserved better than that.
Bloody awful.
To be fair, that’s when Chirac’s ghost was blowing in his ear.
Ah, François Schubert, how suitable.
Why are you all so negative? I thought it was moving.
It was Macron’s choice and it must be nice to have a President interested in classical music.
The choice was probably related to the West-Eastern Divan Orchestra, given Chirac’s views on foreign policy, notably his courageous decision to refuse to participate in the Iraq war.
Because one of the best paid classical artists alive is sitting at the piano and playing like a first year student maybe?
Not even a first-year student.
You wouldn’t get admitted to any serious music college if you played like that at the audition.
You are so right.The negativity is depressing. Classical music is sublime. It’s culture is unhealthy.
The most ironic in all this being that Chirac had no feeling AT ALL for music. In his memories, he recalls his admission interview to ENA, and his answer as he happened to be questioned about Bayreuth: “Mr President, I’d rather tell you that I’m not musical at all. Question me about poetry, literature, art, not about music.” And later: “the jury thought it was a good answer”.
I think Chirac was not listening at all.
The vitriol here is shameful. I wonder if anyone in this feed could play this music because it actually requires compassion, empathy and sensitivity to being human! If you don’t like his interpretation fine but some of these comments are simply mean spirited.
Isn’t the world
brewing with enough
of this ? Has anyone here ever played the piano in an acoustic space like that?? Try it! I am sure that what we hear with microphones so close to the piano is not the same effect as sitting in that church with its reverberations etc.
Barenboim is most probably listening and using the space as an instrument itself.
Well said Mr Krieger, bravo!
“La critique est aisée, mais l’art est difficile”.
Also, I might be getting sentimental, but I found beautiful the reflection of the coffin, covered in the three-coloured French flag, on the side of the Steinway while Barenboim was playing Schubert.
That image and the music were more powerful and meaningful to me that a possible one second memory lapse ar 2:29!
P.S. No French bashing please, I am not French! 😉
You are so gloriously right Norman! How wonderful your words. So right on!
Where is our compassion?
The Israeli masquerading as an Argentinian masquerading as a great pianist.
https://youtu.be/0MaU0kfkK-k
It’s not the memory slip or the wrong notes. That’s OK, many great pianists have those. It’s just that the playing is plain bad. I could never understand how Barenboim was ever considered a major pianist. Never mind a great one.
A few thoughts: 1. he’s pretty old (Re.memory) 2. it’s is a funeral/ nobody paid for tickets to be there 3. as a musician unfamiliar with this piece, I didn’t notice the slip on first listen.
We are entitled to be upset that most people will accept an imperfect performance because the artist is famous but ultimately it’s a funeral and IMO not an appropriate time to critique someone paying tribute… that being said it may be time for him to stop playing solo concerts. Not for me to judge!