Pablo Cassals

Throughout his career, Casals was plagued by stage fright. It struck first less than 2 months after his 14th birthday when he made his first real Barcelona concert appearance in 1891.

"My head was going round, fear gripped me fast, and I said, as I got up: What am I going to do? I cannot remember the beginning of the composition I am going to play!"

Stage fright before playing never left him throughout his long career. At each of thousands of concerts, the terror gripped him as it did on that first occassion. In his old age, stage fright often brought on angina attacks, but he was never defeated. He rose from his deathbed at 96 to play the cello one last time for himself and those who kept vigil

Yehudi Menuhin

A few days before his 13th birthday, Yehudi appeared in a demanding performance of three great concertos with the Berlin Philharmonic, conducted by Bruno Walter. The concert aroused such passion among the audience that management summoned the police to resore order. Albert Einstein came into the artists' room directly from the stage, hugged Yehudi and said "Now I know there is a God in heaven."

Lord Menuhin said, "All children have some gifts. But very few children have the good fortune to have the right background, the parents, the teachers, the opportunity, the encouragement, the love that I had."

Clara Schumann

The diary that Wieck (Clara's father) kept provides precise details of his highly disciplined teaching methods. During the first year of her instruction, he did not encourage her to learn to read music but rather to play be heart the small pieces he composed expressly for her use, piano music that encouraged the little girl to concentrate on physical position, musical phrasing, tone production and familiarity with the keyboard, aspects that accounted for the superb facility and ease at the instrument that she demonstrated to the end of her life.

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The young Felix Mendelssohn was the guest of honour at Clara's sixteenth birthday party on 13 Sept 1835 and presented her his newly composed Capriccio as a birthday present. At the height of the celebration, Clara performed the scherzo from Robert's new sonata at Mendelssohn's request. A few weeks after the birthday party, Frederic Chopin, now 25, arrived in Leipzig and spent an evening in the Wieck home. Robert Schumann was ecstatic to be with Chopin, his exact contemporary,.....

..... Concerto in A minor Op7, a work premiered in 1835 with Mendelssohn conducting the Gewandhaus Orchestra. At the premiere, both Clara and Mendelssohn broke with German performance tradition. She played from memory with her profile to the audience; he conducted with a baton facing the orchestra. Before this time, pianists always played from music in deference to the composer's notation and often performed with their backs to the audience, while conductors contrarily faced the audience and beat time noisily with whatever was in hand, objects ranging from a mace to a rolled parchment.

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.... she returned to Vienna to meet Franz Liszt and later confessed to Robert: "When I heard Liszt for the first time in Vienna, I hardly knew how to bear it, I sobbed aloud, it overcame me so." Early in Sept 1838, Clara returned to the stage of the Gewandhaus for a performance of Chopin's E minor Concerto and 3 piano transcriptions of Schubert songs by Franz Liszt, her new-found friend.

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In Paris Clara met Hector Berlioz, a great admirer of Robert's music. The celebrated composer quickly became her ally. .... .....
When both Erard and Pleyel, the leading piano manufacturers in Paris, placed their best pianos at her disposal, her concert life was again underway.

Daniel Barenboim: pianissimo

When you have learned and played a Debussy pianissimo, and when you then return to a Beethoven pianissimo, you nkow even better what the differences are, and you realise you are dealing with two entirely different sounds. With Debussy the pianissimo has to be bodiless, and with Beethoven, it has to have a physical core of expression and sound.

Daniel Barenboim: Philosophy in music

Spinoza has written of knowledge as not just an amalgamation of information : there is indeed a difference between experience and knowledge. Many problems, like nervousness before starting to play, have to do with too great a reliance on purely intuitive feelings, or empirical knowledge. once you know how something is constructed, how it reacts to the laws governing sound and phrasing, then there is less reason for nervousness. This does not mean that one can always control one's nerves, but there is a nervousness that springs from a fear of not being able to realise everything one wants to, and of course there is a nervousness which comes from insufficient knowledge. Mechanical repetition is a musical equivalent of superstition. You repeat something mechanically and feel more secure because you have done it three or four times. This is a fallacy, and illogical thinking.

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Einstein said that the most inexplicable thing about the universe is that it is inexplicable. One could almost paraphrase him and say that the most explicable thing about music is its inexplicability. After every observation and analysis there is always an element that remains incomprehensible. This is to me music's transcendental quality.

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If we are to understand the phenomena of nature, or the qualities of human beings, or the relationship to a God or to some different, spiritual experience, we can learn much through music. Music is so very important and interesting to me because it is at the same time everything and nothing. If you wish to learn how to live in a democratic society, then you would do well to play in an orchestra. For when you do so, you know when to lead and when to follow. you leave space for others and at the same time you have no inhibitions about claiming a place for yourself. And despite this, or maybe precisely because of it, music is the best means of escape fromthe problems of human existence.

Daniel Barenboim: Interpretation

Every masterpiece is open to any number of interpretations, as long as they do not falsify it. However, it is not possible to combine all interpretations in one performance, just as it is impossible to live more than one life. The interpreter can never perceive all the many details of the many possible interpretations. In any one performance he can only glimpse them.

We often become obssessed with one particular viewpoint or idea and thus become blind to its opposite. But to me, dualism, the paradoxical nature of things, is the very essence of music. It is not coincidence that the sonata form, which is based on this dualism, is one of the most perfect forms of expression. The structure of a classical sonata or symphony is based on this principle of dualism. It brings out the dramatic essence of music, which does not consist merely of loud or soft, of fast or slow, for music in itself is dramatic, even in its more epic forms such as the compositions of bach. The first subject may be more heroic, and the second subject more lyrical; it is the juxtaposition of these opposing elements that lends the music a feeling of tension and excitement.

Daniel Barenboim: Orchestra seating

I remember Kubelik telling me that I need to change the seating of the orchestra. Under Kubelik, the orchestra always sat with separated first and second violins. Then under Solti, the violins sat toegther on the conductor's left with the cellos to the right, on the outside. When I came, the violas sat on the outside instead, which made many musicians unhappy. The cellists were especially disappointed because they were used to sitting to the conductor's right and they felt they had more room and independence that way. I felt that the sound and balance in the strings were not right, however, and opted for the more traditional 'German' seating, with violas oustide and the cellos inside, facing out, giving a fuller picture of the bass.

I had always had doubts of dividing the first and second violins. FIrst of all, with the second violins on the conductor's right, they would be playing in the wrong direction - their instrument facing away from the audience. Second, the problem of the ensemble, especially in unison or octave passages, would be greater because of the difficulty in hearing from one side of the stage to the other. Later after we rebuilt Orchestra Hall to correct this deficiency, I became more convinced that the advantages of separaing the violins were greater than disadvantages. NOw the violins sit as he first suggested with cellos and violas between them and the basses behind the first violins. Actually the communication between the violins is better when they are seating opposite sides, because the passages of unisons or octaves you get the sound from the whole width of the stage, which makes up for any lack of direction. Most importantly, the proximity of the cellos and basses to the first iolins gives the whole string section a fuller and more harmonic sound, and in addition the violins sound rounder and more beautiful in the high register when the bass is next to them, almost like a support

Daniel Barenboim: Tempo

Singers, often ask me what tempo I am going to take. I answer that I cannot tell until I have heard them sing, and I often give the same silly but illuminating example: when you are going on vacation and have no suitcase, what do you do? Do you go and buy just any suitcase and then decide what you can put in it? Or do you first consider what you need to take - shirts, tennis racket, rollerblades whatever - and then buy a suitcase of certain size? most likely, you do the latter. The tempo is the 'suitcase;, and the music is the 'contents'. If the suitcase is too small, you can't fit in all your belongings, and if the suitcase too big, everything floats around. Once you arrive it does not matter if the suitcase is brown and round or square and black. The only thing that matters is whether you have what you need. The tempo is therefore to provide the correct speed for the content of the music; therefore it is the last decision I make.

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I think that there is something physical in one's feeling about tempo. You should feel uneasy when a tempo is not correct. This may apply to a particular moment, in a particular place, with a particular acoustic, tension and volume. in an over resonant church you are forced to take a slightly slower tempo than in a building with a dry acoustic, because the sound needs more time to come into being.
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The other extreme is that of slowness. If there is not enough intensity in the vibrato of the strings, or in the harmonic tensions of the music, even a relatively fast-moving tempo will sound too slow. When the tempo is right, all the different ingredients can correlate with each other in perfect harmony.
When you work at an opera house and rehearse with a singer at a piano, when the weight of the sound is considerably less than that of a full orchestra, you maturally take the music at a slightly faster speed. When the sound has weight, it needs time to move. The weight of the sound is a determining factor for the correct tempo. If you ahve an orchestra able to produce the necessary weight, you can take a certian tempo more slowly. With an orchestra lacking this weight the same piece has to be taken imperceptibly faster

Daniel Barenboim: Intonation

One of the most delicate subjects in this area is intonation, and I had my share of problems with intonation at the beginning of my conducting days. Having grown up playing the piano, I did not always notice i f something was not quite clean from the point of view of intonation in the orchestra. I knew what was not quite clean if a wrong note was played, and obviously I heard that chords were out of tune, but I could not always indicate which instrument was too low and which too high.
If you do not hear a chord very clearly or very cleanly, just say what you are thinking at the moment - that this is too high and that is too low - you may be right, and then you will know if this is the case for the next time. or you may be on the wrong track altogether and tell a musicain that he is too low and he may say "I was not too low, if anything I was too high". You musn't be afraid of saying something wrong, because that is how you will train yourself. And this is how I learned. I was not embarrased, if I heard something unclean, to say, this is too low.
At the beginning it often happened that a player replied: 'What do you mean , too low" I was far too high!" Then I would say, "Yes, you are right". This is how you train your ears. But you must be open about it, and not afraid of making mistakes. It is rather like learning a strange language. If you are afraid of making mistakes you will never learn to speak it.

Daniel Barenboim: Orchestras and Conductors

If you were to ask a first-class orchestral player, he would say that few conductors have any influence on the orchestra. They play the tempi indicated by the conductor, adding the nuances or the balance he wants, and that is the end of it. But with a good conductor, musical contact can be so strong that the musicians react to the slightest movement of his hand, his finger, his eye or his body. I f the orchestra is at one with the conductor, they play differently if he stands up straight, or bends forward, or sideways or backwards. They are influenced by every movement. The conductor’s up-beat, moreover, has an influence on the first sound. If his up-beat has no authority, the sound is dead, unless the musicians ignore him completely. If they cannot or do not want to play for him, feeling that he has nothing to impart, they will just play the Beethoven symphony the way they have played it a thousand times before. But if they respect him, they will be with him from the up-beat, which as a direct influence on the first note, whether it should sound hard or soft, on the way it is sustained and to what extent it should vibrate.

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When Sergiu Celibidache said that none, or very few of his colleagues could read scores, a lot of people got cross. But they were taking what he said at face value. What he meant was that many conductors cannot hear the sound, the dynamic or balance of the orchestra during their reading. When you look at a score and at a certain point it says crescendo, then the whole orchestra plays crescendo from pianissimo to fortissimo. Now if the second flute, which is not unimportant and the kettle drum, the trumpets and the trombones all start the crescendo at the same time, as is pointed out in the score, you can hear this. But for that you need knowledge and the ability to read, in order to realise a crescendo in an orchestra, the instruments cannot all start at the same time. The crescendo must be organised in such a way that everything can be heard, the full capabilities of every instrument have to come through. A conductor must be able to think acoustically, and that is very difficult.
For instance, in the beginning of Wagner’s Die Walkure. The cellos and double basses play five semiquavers and a crotchet all marked forte, and after that the second beat is subito piano. You cannot just lay forte and then the subito piano. The forte must rise so that you get the effect of a precipice before the subito piano. This is all part of the reading: the first two crotchets are forte, and the third piano. Everything can be learned in detail except the intensity. The intensity of a forte or a piano, the strength with which you play a forte before getting through to the subito piano is something that cannot be learned.

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Absolute pitch is a help in correcting false intonation. Intonation does not exist in a vacuum, since it is often influenced by correct or incorrect balance. A note may be too high or too low, or a chord may sound unclean because it is wrong from the point of view of balance. Or the overtones may suddenly be too weak or too loud in the chord, or the sound is not homogeneous. In a woodwind chord and instrument like the oboe can sometimes be very penetrating and harder than the others, and that automatically sounds wrong and unclean. You may then get the impression that the oboe is too high, but in fact it is only too hard. With orchestras you know really well, you can correct these things during the normal rehearsal time. They present no problems to me in Chicago and Berlin.

Daniel Barenboim: Different piano schools

There have been different piano schools. There was the so-called German school, which stemmed to a great degree from Theodor Leschitizky in Vienna. Under various guises, one could count such a variety of pianists as Artur Schnabel, Edwin Fischer, Wilhelm Backhaus, Walter Gieseking and Wilhelm Kempff. And there was the very famous Russian school, which was well known throughout the world through the great Soviet virtuosi such as Emil Gilels and Sviatoslav Richter and earlier on through Rachmaninov and Vladimir Horowitz and others. And before both of these there was a French school, which was more limited, but which gave us Alfred Cortot and Yves Nat – to my mind a great pianist but much underestimated outside France; and the great Italian school that went from Busoni to Arturo Benedetti Michelangeli and Maurizio Pollini. Each of these schools had, in a certain sense, a connection to Liszt. None would have been possible without this grandfatherly person. To my mind, the Hungarian-Slavic side of Liszt was developed by the Russians; the elegance of Liszt’s playing went to the French school, and the slightly more intellectual side to the German and the Italian schools. When you analyse these piano schools you can almost see the different stages of Liszt’s life; Budapest with the connection to the East, Rome in later years, Weimar and of course Paris.

The German branch, which came to us through Busoni and Arrau in more recent days, was probably influenced by the side of Liszt that was interested in Wagner and in the transcriptions of the Beethoven symphonies and the songs, most of which were by Schubert. The Russian branch was more concerned with the virtuosity; the pure, pianistic side of Liszt was developed there with a much greater sense of freedom in rubato, a great ability to bring out hidden voices in the chords of the piano – the prime example of this was the Polish pianist Josef Hofmann – and a great capacity to develop a sense of perspective in piano playing. In this school you feel a much greater dynamic range between the melody and the accompaniment. You very often hear the melody being played in a good healthy mezzo forte or forte and the accompaniment pianissimo, whereas the German school balances the accompaniment and the melody within a very narrow area. This is only on e of the Russian school’s characteristics, which was then carried over into the modern Soviet school.

Daniel Barenboim: Sensation-> Imagination-> Reason

I have learned a lot about music by reading books that have nothing to do with it – books by Spinoza and Aristotle, for instance. Aristotle tells us about the faculties of the soul – sensation first, then the internal sense of imagination and memory, and then reason. To me this represents the right path to absorbing a musical composition. It is a never-ending process of adaptation to the work, of absorbing it until it becomes part of ourselves. Only when we reach this stage, can we recreate the work. In the actual performance, the Aristotelian order is reversed: we reason before we start, and then through our senses, recollect our first sensation. The sensory impression of a musical composition can be experienced either through reading or through playing it. His first sensory contact is extremely subjective – he perceives the work through the effect it produces on him and this perception is not always reliable or necessarily compatible with knowledge of the work itself.

Daniel Barenboim: Language and Music

Language is also of great importance in interpretation. It is impossible for a child who has been hearing French from the day he or she was born not to be influenced by its sounds when playing music. The same applies to Germans, Russians and any other nationality. The fact that in French a heavy accent is often placed at the end of words produces difficulties when trying to work out musical phrasing. There is nothing more unnatural in music than an accent at the end of a passage or a sentence. The German language, however, due to its heavy consonants, possesses a certain weight which is reflected in German music. In several ways German music is the opposite of French music. The main difficulty with German music, from the dynamic point of view, is the slowness of the build-up, of the Steigerung and the idea of allmahlich steigern which one often sees in German music scores. It is difficult to translate this: it means approximately ‘increase’ or ‘gradually increasing’. One could describe this particular difficulty in German as an almost structural one. In French music, in Debussy and Ravel, we have exactly the opposite – there it is the swiftness of the dynamics that is so difficult. It is like a sudden spark that flashes up; there is a crescendo or diminuendo in a single note, and you have to execute the dynamics as swiftly as possible. The French use a very descriptive word for this: etincelle, meaning spark. These are basic characteristics of language which are audible in the way musicians of different nationalities play. French musicians have a basic difficulty with solid rhythm, solid sound but fantastic capacity for very imaginative sound colours and swiftness. The German musician tends to possess a better sense of rhythm but probably less imagination for sound.

I consider that differences in language really do have an influence on musical performances. It has to do with the question of tempo, and the question of colour. In Latin orchestras the strings often display an ability to play thinly, lightly, which is very appropriate for a lot of music. An some German musicians, with a natural tendency towards a weightier sound, have greater difficulty with this kind of music.

The element of flair and colour, and an ability to attach as much importance to the least significant detail as to the most important, is a very French characteristic. Once cannot begin to read a Debussy score unless one knows this, and has a feeling for it. You see this characteristic in other areas of French life – the importance the French attach not only to the food but also to its presentation, for instance. They have a capacity for devoting an incredible amount of time and energy to what would seem to other people to be unimportant details, and this emerges very clearly in their music. They can do something quite out of the ordinary from sheer enthusiasm, which, at its best, is exceedingly attractive. On the other hand, with good German musicians you feel the foundation of the music in the way they play. One of their most impressive qualities is their ability to play loudly and intensely, yet never harshly.

The French brass players have serious problems with their language when they play non-French music- they have to come to terms with the fact that they are used to French (u umlaut) sounds and do not really have the ‘a, o and u’. Therefore the sound has a tendency not to be well supported.

Daniel Barenboim on Jacqueline Du Pre

Whatever I showed her, or whatever she heard, seemed to bring out something that was already in her. She had a horror of anything that was fake, or insincere, of anything artificial. She had a gift very few performers have, the gift of making you feel that she was actually composing the music as she was playing. She did not know what it was to have technical difficulties, nor what it meant to play safe. There was a sensation of pure abandon when she played and it was that quality that endeared her to her colleagues and to her audience. There was something in her playing that was completely and inevitably right – as far as tempo and dynamics were concerned. She played with a great deal of rubato, with great freedom, but it was so convincing that you felt like a mere mortal faced with somebody who possessed some kind of ethereal dimension.

Daniel Barenboim: Conducting

Conducting is as much a profession as playing an instrument. But a great part of the audience simply does not know what a conductor is doing. When an audience hears a really great orchestra like that of Chicago, Berlin or Vienna playing a repertoire piece, they often cannot tell what the conductor's contribution amounts to. ..........

When an audience hears a violinist, they see his fingers and his bow moving. But when a conductor stands in front of the orchestra, all sorts of extra-musical considerations come to the fore: personality, charisma, often blatant sex appeal, things that have nothing to do with music.

What is so difficult about conducting and what is so difficult about becoming a conductor? An instrumentalist must be able to play his instrument and to have the physical power and manual skill to manage and control his instrument. But how do you control an orchestra? An instrumentalist can always practise. Where should a conductor practise? He cannot learn the music or the notes in an abstract way. Imagine a pianist who has no piano, and who has to learn a Beethoven Sonata merely in his head. It is impossible.

The manipulation of sound is very hard to learn and particularly difficult ofr a conductor, who has no physical contact with the sound. The conductor should really know the orchestra, and what the instruments can do, how the music moves from one group to another and practically walks around the orchestra. If the first violins are the main instruments in the first eight bars, and the oboe comes later, the music moving from one to the other, you must work with the strings. A wind instrument can play alone, whereas there are sixteen first violins, each with its own individuality and this has to be organised. By organisation, I mean that each player not only plays his part as best he can, but also listens to his neighbours, trying to match their way of playing. That means, first of all, clear intonation and a similarity of attack, sound and articulation. It is the homogeneity of the group that facilitates the overall expression. This principle applies to the whole orchestra. The conductor should be able to listen to the sounds that are produced by the orchestra, as well as contribute to their precision and expression.

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One of the most important qualities required of an interpreter or of the conductor is the capacity to balance the different voices or instruments. The creation of true equilibrium means that the different voices are audible in such a way that they appear in proper perspective - all present, but some nearer than others. Each voice or instrument must be clearly articulated in itself - only then will it be in a position to relate to the others.

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A string player's bow can go in two directions- up or down. Whether one starts a certain passage up bow or down bow is important. More important still is the way the bow is distributed and the speed at which it moves. The bow has a much greater weight at the frog than at the point, where it becomes thinner and lighter, and a good string player must be able to control this difference in weight. Each part of the bow has advantages over other parts for certain types of articulation. A natural weight is produced by an attack down-bow, starting at the frog, but one can also very easily start a note at the point, up-bow because this is where it is easier to control the beginning of the sound. It is important to know how to divide this: one, two or five notes in one bow, but when does the bow change, and in what way? One must not forget that in a symphony orchestra there are usually sixteen, sometimes 14, sometimes 18 first violins. This means there are 14, 16, 18 people playing exactly the same notes at the same time. Imagine if those 16 people sitting at a table were expected , at a sign from the waiter, to lift a fork at exactly the same time, with the same speed and the same enthusiasm. This problem does not apply to the wind instruments, where each player only plays his part, the second oboe part being different from that of the first oboe. There must therefore be an element of musical organisation in order to produce the string section sound.

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I was very fortunate too in being able to consult Jacqueline, about some of these features which interestedme enormously, and I indicate the bowings in the string parts myself to this day. If tehre are 16 first violins, that means there are eight copies of the music to be made. I usde to do them all myself, thereby learning each part in an individual way. When you think of the complexities and the amount of time spent on bowing a Mozart symphony, you can imagine how much time I spent putting together complete new bowings for the Ring cycle in Bayreuth! I have found that even very fine string players in orchestras or in chamber orchestras, or even soloists, do not think enough about bow distribution and bow speed.

If a conductor does not udnerstand the importance of the string sound, he is simply accepting a standardized way of playing. Some orchestras and conductors take the easy way out , in the sense that, if something is marked 'piano' for one of the string sections, the leader plays mezzo forte, and the rest of the section plays pianissimo. The sum of the 15 pianissimos and one or two mezzo fortes is equal to a general piano. It has the advantage that it is easier to play together, and if the leader has a particularly attractive sound, the other instruments simply provide a kind of aura round it. But I have always been against this principle. I consider it musically wrong. I think that 16 people playing expressive piano, have a completely different sound from one or two playing mezzo forte or forte and the rest playing pianissimo, just providing a cushion as it were. The latter has less quality and less intensity.

It is hard to find the right balance between the individuality of phrasing, which is necessary when an oboe or a clarinet has a solo phrase in a symphony. The individuality of phrasing a major solo, as the oboe or the clarinet have in Schubert’s Unfinished Symphony, must, a few bars later, be disciplined into chord playing, where one should not be able to distinguish the individual colours of the instruments. This problem is very obvious to a pianist playing a Mozart concerto. When they piano has the main theme, it requires a very personal phrasing and articulation, with a maximum amount of imagination and fantasy. Later, when the main subject is in the orchestra, and the piano only has an ornamental, less important part, it is quite difficult to subjugate yourself. You often hear performances by people who have great individuality, and who project every note, even where their part is secondary.

Then of course there is the problem of intonation. The piano is either in tune or out of tune and it is the job of the piano tuner not the pianist to see that it is perfectly in tune. Each not the wind player plays, however, may be either too flat, perfectly in tune or too sharp. There are notes that are slightly exaggerated, sharp or flat, when one instrument is played by itself, and this can be very disturbing to the ear, but in a chord with several instruments it is simply excrutiating to the sensitve listener to hear a faulty intonation. It is essential for a conductor to detect faults of intonation, as well as faults of balance in wind playing. Certain notes may sound slightly out of tune if they are not properly balanced in the chord. The same problem arises with the brass.

The difficulty is increased when you put everything together and add timpani and percussion. In other words, you have timpani and percussion, brass, woodwind and strings, and you have to unite all these different sounds.

The main problem with the brass is, of course, the power of their instruments. A conductor must have profound knowledge of the necessary volume and 'dosage'. In other words, if the word 'crescendo' is written all over the score, it should NOT be played by the entire orchestra at the same time, since the weaker instruments will not be heard distinctly - the brass and timpani should start the crescendo later. This balancing, organising or even manipulating of the sound is essential for clarity in the orchestra. An equilibrium has to be found by the conductor between clarity and fullness of sound which can only come about when everybody is allowed to play with full intensity and volume.

There is something about the brass players which is almost frightening to a young conductor. Because of the instruments they play, these musicians are usually big, strong people who have the ability to kill any other sound by sheer volume. They can kill the woodwind and the strings - and also the conductor and the music! Lesser brass players often tend to play loudly; they lack sensitivity to what goes on within the rest of the orchestra and are therefore insensitive to the music. With classical music - Mozart and Beethoven or Schubert - they usually have a harmonic role, playing tonic and dominant whenever the melody is to be played loudly.

Before Berlioz, composers did not consciously consider the colours of the different instruments in the orchestra. Within the general framework of the orchestra, colour was never considered as an independent element per se. It was Berlioz who started thinking about it in a new way. Before Berlioz and his fellow Romantics, the timpani and trumpets, especially are often reduced to the less interesting role of playing the tonic and dominant. Owing however to the volume they produce they are inevitably in the foreground. In classical works they do not usually have much to do, and therefore their level of concentration is inevitably lower than that of the musicians who play constantly and without interruption. However, when you have good, sensitive brass players, they can through one or two notes or a difference in attack, influence the colours of the whole orchestra. For example Ravel's Daphnis and Chloe, the crescendo of the trumpets makes you feel as if the entire orchestra were suddenly set on fire by just two or three notes from the trumpets. When the sound is properly balanced, and the attack is pure and not too hard, the brightness of the instrument can communicate itself to the rest of the orchestra

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In classical music, you find the timpani in many ways having the same problem as the brass, always playing tonic and dominant, with the added danger that the classical composers did not write for chromatic timpani. They were therefore limited to two or three notes. The problem of timpani si that, played properly, they are capable of much more than simply acting as an element of emphasis and rhythm. Really good players have a certain imagination for sound - and for creating the illusion of more sustained sound - as on the piano.

Daniel Barenboim: Polyphony in music

The only really polyphonic instruments are the piano, all forms of harpsichord or clavichord, the guitar, organ and the harp. You can create an illusion of polyphony if you play Bach unaccompanied on a cello or violin, but by nature these instruments are monophonic. Music, however is polyphonic by nature, and harmony is possible only in polyphonic terms. I have often found it necessary to point out to both singers and instrumentalists the polyphonic nature of music - the relationship between the vertical and the horizontal, the horizontal being the separate lines of melody and the vertical the harmonies, the polyphony. If the relation between the horizontal and the vertical is incorrect, then the whole interpretation is incorrect.

Daniel Barenboim: Crescendo

With Beethoven you often need to build up a crescendo over a long time and if you arrive at a forte or a fortissimo too soon, the rest of the crescendo is gone. With Debussy it is often exactly the oppisite: there are sudden flashes of crescendo or diminuendo that happen very quicly - sometimes on one note only - and if you miss them you achieve only a very thick sound that simply does not suit the music.

Daniel Barenboim: Lieder

It can be very useful for a pianist to know the Lieder literature, and to play it. First of all, the human voice isthe most direct musical instrument. When you play music that has a text, like the German Lied, you understand what hapens to the music when a vivid word or striking idea comes from the text. For instance, when the word Tod (death) is used in Schubert's songs, something unusual happens harmonically and rhythmically. It is not really important whether this something was a conscious or subconscious act on Schubert's part; the important thing is that it is special. And when you find similar petterns in Schubert's sonatas or impromptus, the experience is that much richer. In other words, there is much to be gained from dealing with different works by the same composer.

Characterisation is clearly of great importance in a Lied. When the piano plays the introduction, an interlude or a clising section, the whole atmostphere should be expressed in it. Sometimes it may be just half a bar - in Schubert's 'Gretchen am Spinnrade', the spinning wheel is first set in motion through the piano. By playing Lieder, the pianist can develop gifts of characterisation- sometimes by very small rhythmical patterns or modulations - which completely change the atmosphrere.

Another factor, which applies also to chamber music with piano and strings but is all-important to the voice, is the use of the pedal. Although the voice is independent of the piano part, as soon as there is any over-pedalling in the accompaniment, both the text and the voice are blurred. Also important is the fact that a sustained vocal line often needs a certain dryness in the piano part to compensate - as a contrast to the mellifluous legato line.