The October 2018 issue of Limelight Magazine is now on sale featuring Daniel Barenboim, Karina Canellakis, Teatro alla Scala Ballet Company, and much more.

The Voice of Music channel broke a long-standing ban on the anti-Semitic composer’s works.

Barenboim’s modernist Debussy may just be what this year needs.

The decision comes after the Awards faced a backlash, including from artists such as Daniel Barenboim, Mariss Jansons and the Leipzig Gewandhaus, for recognising a rap duo whose works have been deemed anti-Semitic.

The legendary maestro will perform three concerts at the Sydney Opera House with the Staatskapelle Berlin.

Barenboim himself has not been seen in Australia since 1970, and this is the first time he has brought his Orchestra here.

Igor Levit and Daniel Barenboim have each made an appeal to European unity at the music festival. Continue reading Get unlimited digital access from $4 per month Subscribe Already a subscriber? Log in

Daniel Barenboim and Charles Dutoit help us discover the private pianist behind the public persona.

Daniel Barenboim and Charles Dutoit share their insights, plus we look at John Adams, Alma Mahler, Rostropovich and more. Continue reading Get unlimited digital access from $4 per month Subscribe Already a subscriber? Log in

Playwright Victor Gordon imagines a confrontation between a young Israeli conductor and an elderly Holocaust survivor.

Barenboim’s new piano is a concert grand made by the Belgian instrument maker Chris Maene to the pianist’s specifications. It differs from the usual Steinway D in several crucial respects, one being the use of parallel rather than crossover strings. So far this Maene piano is the only one of its kind, and Barenboim has “fallen in love with it”. I hear less tonal homogeneity across the registers, less “blend” as the pianist puts it. The bass produces great warmth, shown off in Liszt’s arrangement of the March from Wagner’s Parsifal. The tone of the upper registers resembles a Classical period fortepiano (“hollow” is too strong a word), which makes it eminently suitable for Scarlatti. I’ve not heard Barenboim in Scarlatti before; he approaches these three sonatas in an unruffled but characterful way. Like the Fazioli piano, which it also resembles in the treble, the Maene seems incapable of producing a smooth, singing legato – rather a drawback in Chopin’s Ballade No 1 and Liszt’s Funérailles – and we are used to more upper-level brightness in Beethoven’s 32 Variations and Liszt’s Mephisto Waltz. The latter is neither diabolic nor exciting, although the tone colours are attractive. Big… Continue reading Get…

Steve Davislim's Tito will also be among the highlights to catch the ears of Aussie audiences.