Michael Barenboim

Born in Paris in 1985 to Elena Bashkirova and Daniel Barenboim, the violinist Michael Barenboim began playing the piano at the age of four. After the family moved to Berlin in 1992, he switched to the violin. His teachers for this instrument were Abraham Jaffe and Axel Wilczok, who was also his instructor at the Rostock Academy of Music. Michael Barenboim additionally studied philosophy for several semesters at the Sorbonne in Paris. He began his career as the concertmaster of the West-Eastern Divan Orchestra. Long a regular guest artist with major orchestras, he is also a sought-after soloist. Michael Barenboim has performed Schoenberg’s Violin Concerto with the Vienna Philharmonic and the Chicago Symphony Orchestra and has moreover appeared with the Munich Philharmonic, Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra, Tonhalle Orchestra Zurich, Israel Philharmonic, Mahler Chamber Orchestra, Filarmonica della Scala, and the Orchestra dell’Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia. He made his debuts with the Berlin Philharmonic in 2018, and, in 2020, with the Los Angeles Philharmonic. For many years, Michael Barenboim worked with Pierre Boulez, performing several of the French composer’s works in Berlin, London, and Paris and at the Salzburg Festival to mark Boulez’s 90th birthday. His first recording, which was released in 2017, includes Boulez’s Anthèmes I and II alongside solo sonatas by Bach and Bartók. An important component of Barenboim’s artistic work is chamber music; his most recent release contains accounts of the Mozart piano trios with Daniel Barenboim at the piano and Kian Soltani on cello. Michael Barenboim is a member of the Boulez Ensemble and has premiered numerous new scores with this group, including compositions by Jörg Widmann and Kareem Roustom. He is a professor at the Barenboim-Said Academy in Berlin, which appointed him as its dean in 2020.

Lucerne Festival debut on 1 September 2011 in a program of works for solo violin by Bach and Boulez.

July 2021