Daniel Barenboim Quotes

8 Sourced Quotes

Music has the capacity to create a greater reality.

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

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

Daniel Barenboim
To have real knowledge, one must understand the essence of things and not only their manifestations.

Daniel Barenboim