Daniel Barenboim and Martha Argerich

At the age of eleven, Daniel Barenboim saw Edwin Fischer conducting from the piano. It was immediately clear to him: “That's exactly what I want to do!” And so it happened that the young master pianist, who had already performed in public in his native Buenos Aires at the age of eight, also embarked on a conducting career – as the youngest member of Igor Markevitch’s conducting class. Daniel Barenboim made his conducting debut in 1967 and in the following years took on leading positions with the Orchestre de Paris, the Chicago Symphony Orchestra and La Scala in Milan before becoming artistic director and general music director of the Staatsoper Unter den Linden in 1992. Together with the Palestinian-American literary scholar Edward Said, he founded the West-Eastern Divan Orchestra, which represents tolerance and international understanding more than any other ensemble. In 2015, he also founded the Berlin Barenboim-Said Academy, which nurtures outstanding young musicians from the Middle East. Since his debut with the Berliner Philharmoniker as a soloist in 1964 and his conducting debut in 1969, Barenboim has enjoyed a decades-long artistic partnership with the orchestra, which appointed him an honorary member in 1992 and honorary conductor in 2019: “Even as a child, the Berliner Philharmoniker were a model for me of how an orchestra could and should sound. Their unmistakable sound blew me away even then.”

Martha Argerich is the grande dame of the piano. Her interpretations are crystal clear, dynamic and at the same time deeply emotional, with a special understanding of the inner structures of a work. In this way she has become an outstanding interpreter of the piano literature of the 19th and 20th centuries. Her extensive repertoire includes works by Beethoven, Chopin, Schumann, Liszt, Tchaikovsky, Debussy, Bartók, Messiaen and many others. The pianist was born in Buenos Aires – one and a half years before her friend Daniel Barenboim, who she already knew as a child. At just seven years of age, she appeared as the soloist in Beethoven’s First Piano Concerto. In 1955, she moved with her family to Europe, where she continued her studies in London, Vienna and Switzerland under such luminaries as Friedrich Gulda, Nikita Magaloff, Arturo Benedetti Michelangeli and Stefan Askenase. Winning the Warsaw Chopin Competition in 1965 made her world famous. In addition to her solo recitals and concerts with the world’s leading orchestras, Martha Argerich is an acclaimed chamber musician and performs regularly with Mischa Maisky, Gidon Kremer and Daniel Barenboim: “It is very beneficial for me to be part of an ensemble,” she says. The virtuoso, who has won countless prizes, actively supports young talented pianists and, among other things, founded the Piano Competition and the Martha Argerich Festival in Buenos Aires.