LIVE from the NYPL: Music Quickens Time: Daniel Barenboim

Virtuoso pianist and conductor Daniel Barenboim in his new book, Music Quickens Time, draws on his profound engagement with music to argue its urgent value and importance in our everyday lives. While we may sometimes think of personal, social, and political issues as existing independently of each other, Barenboim shows with bravura and passion how music teaches us that this is impossible.

Drawing on his own involvement with Palestine in a conversation with Paul Holdengräber, Barenboim will examine the transformative power of music in the world, from his own performances of Wagner in Israel, his friendship with Edward Said, to the creation of the internationally acclaimed West-Eastern Divan Orchestra, which continues to bring together young musicians from Egypt, Syria, Lebanon, Jordan, Tunisia, and Israel to make music. Barenboim describes first-hand how music offers us a way to explore differences and at times resolve some of the most seemingly intractable issues of our times.

photo of Daniel Barenboim by Sheila Rock

About Daniel Barenboim

Daniel Barenboim is one of the most prominent musicians of the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries, as both pianist and conductor. After 15 years conducting the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, he is now principal guest conductor of the La Scala opera house in Milan, Italy. He has received numerous Grammy awards, and is the author of A Life in Music, and, co-authored with Edward Said, Parallels and Paradoxes. He was a UN Ambassador for Peace and has received many awards including the Goethe Medal, the Royal Philharmonic Society Gold Medal, the Praemium Imperiale, and the Wolf Prize in Arts.



 

Paul Holdengräber

Paul Holdengräber is the Director of Public Programs known as "LIVE from the NYPL" for The Research Libraries of The New York Public Library.