Last October, the conductor Daniel Barenboim (Buenos Aires, 80 years old) announced that he would retire from part of his professional activities in the coming months.
Today he has taken a new step: he has announced that from the 31st he will cease his activities at the Berlin Staatsoper, the Berlin State Opera.
“My health has deteriorated in recent months and I have been diagnosed with a serious neurological disease.
Now I have to concentrate as much as possible on my physical well-being,” Barenboim said three months ago.
This Friday he added in a statement: “Unfortunately, my state of health has deteriorated remarkably over the last year.
I can no longer provide the services that are rightly required of a music director."
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Born in Argentina in 1942, Barenboim made his international debut as a pianist at the age of ten, before becoming a noted conductor.
He has also created a foundation and an orchestra, the West-Eastern Divan, to promote cooperation between young musicians from Israel and the Arab countries.
Recently, EL PAÍS SEMANAL exclusively published an excerpt from his memoirs, where he recounts: “I remember that people laughed because when I was little I thought that everyone played the piano.
My parents taught piano, so apart from family, the only people who came to the house during the day were students and other pianists.
I didn't meet anyone from outside who didn't play.
People found this very funny and I didn't understand why.
Music was all around me, after all.
Instinctively, I understood that music was a language in which I could communicate, although of course I wasn't able to articulate it then.
Music was serious business, but it was always, above all, a huge source of pleasure for me."