Born in Argentina to Jewish parents, Barenboim rose to prominence as a prodigious young pianist, before moving to Israel as a teenager and going on to become a leading conductor, first in Israel and then in Australia with the Melbourne and Sydney Symphony Orchestras.
He married the British cellist Jacqueline du Pré in Jerusalem in 1967, converting to Judaism. Following her death, he married the Russian pianist Elena Bashkirova.
He became general musical director at Berlin’s State Opera in 1992 and is credited is credited with reviving its fortunes after it fell into obscurity under communism.
In Jerusalem in 2001, he provoked controversy by conducting the Prelude to the opera Tristan und Isolde by Richard Wagner at the Israel Festival.
Wagner’s music had been unofficially banned in Israel because of his anti-Semitic beliefs and the fact that he was Adolf Hitler’s favourite composer.
Barenboim initially ceded to protests from Holocaust survivors and pressure from politicians – but at the end of the concert, he asked the audience if they wanted him to play Wagner after all.
Although some protested, calling it “the music of the concentration camps”, the majority of concertgoers asked him to proceed. The performance ended with a standing ovation.
The conductor argued that, while Wagner was undoubtedly anti-semitic, he had died long before the rise of Naziism, and his music was “too important” to be ignored.
“I didn’t want anybody who felt unable to hear this music because of the association [with Nazism] to be confronted with it,” he told Israeli radio.
“But people who don’t have the association should be able to hear it.”
