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Daniel Barenboim is a conductor and pianist of top international stature, known for an extraordinarily large orchestral and operatic repertoire. He is the general music director and chief conductor for life of the Staatsoper Berlin in Germany.

Barenboim was born in Buenos Aires on November 15, 1942, into a family of Ukrainian Jewish descent. His mother was his first piano teacher. He later studied with his father, Enrique Barenboim, who was an eminent music professor. After playing for the noted violinist Adolf Busch, who was impressed by his talent, Daniel made his debut recital at the age of seven. In 1951, he played at the Mozarteum in Salzburg and observed Igor Markevitch's conducting class. The family moved to Israel in 1952; two years later, Barenboim went back to Salzburg for a conducting course with Markevitch, piano studies with Edwin Fischer, and chamber music performance with Enrico Mainardi. He studied conducting with Carlo Zecchi at the Accademia Musicale Chigiana in Siena, also attending Nadia Boulanger's music theory and composition class at Fontainebleau. His U.S. debut was at New York's Carnegie Hall on January 20, 1957, in Prokofiev's Piano Concerto No. 1, with Leopold Stokowski conducting the Symphony of the Air.

Debuts with leading orchestras included the London Symphony Orchestra (New York, 1968), Berlin Philharmonic (1969), and New York Philharmonic (1970). In 1967, Barenboim married the brilliant cellist Jacqueline Du Pré, with whom he made several exceptional recital recordings. Unfortunately, this partnership ended when Du Pré contracted multiple sclerosis, which forced her to end her playing career in 1972. She died in 1987. Barenboim began a long association with the Deutsche Grammophon label in 1972, and the following year, issued a recording of Bruckner's Symphony No. 4 in E flat major ("Romantic") with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra. He has maintained long relationships with both that orchestra and with Bruckner's music. In 1982, Barenboim issued an album of music by Ravel with the Orchestre de Paris. He has guest conducted virtually all of the world's leading orchestras.

In 1989, he was named Sir Georg Solti's successor as music director of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra. Barenboim became music director of the Staatsoper Berlin in 1992, then was named chief conductor for life by its orchestra in 2002. In 1999, along with Palestinian-American scholar Edward Said, Barenboim co-founded the West-Eastern Divan Orchestra, a summer youth orchestra designed to foster understanding and cooperation, and he established the Barenboim-Said Academy in Berlin. Devoted to the training of young Arab and Israeli musicians, the school opened in 2016. A recording of Beethoven's Symphony No. 9 by the West-Eastern Divan Orchestra appeared in 2013, and the group has spawned several young musicians with international careers, sometimes performing and recording with Barenboim.

Barenboim has a rich recorded repertoire as a conductor, pianist, accompanist, and chamber music player. Interestingly, as a pianist he tends to focus on Mozart, Beethoven, and the early Romantics, while as a conductor he favors later Romantic music, particularly Brahms and Bruckner (he has won a medal from the Bruckner Society of America). Barenboim's recorded output continued to be abundant through his ninth decade, including not only standard repertory but such novelties as On My New Piano (2016), an album devoted to the capabilities of an instrument custom-made for Barenboim by builder Chris Maene and based on a piano owned by Liszt. As a conductor, he continued to undertake lengthy, difficult scores by the likes of Bruckner and Mahler. His 2017 recording of Elgar's The Dream of Gerontius with the Staatskapelle Berlin was critically acclaimed. He has often issued more than a dozen recordings in the course of a single year, and by 2022, his recorded output included well over 500 releases. Early that year, he already had three albums on the docket for release: an album of Mozart and Strauss oboe concertos with the West-Eastern Divan Orchestra and oboist Cristina Gómez Godoy, an album of piano encores, and the annual Vienna Philharmonic New Year's Concert, which he has conducted multiple times. However, in early 2023, Barenboim stepped down from the Staatsoper, as his health prevented him from carrying out his duties to their fullest. ~ Joseph Stevenson & James Manheim

Martha Argerich is widely considered one of the greatest pianists of the late 20th and early 21st centuries. Unusually, her genius reveals itself mostly in collaborations: with orchestras and conductors in concertos, and with chamber musicians.

Of Catalan and Russian Jewish background, Argerich was born in Buenos Aires on June 5, 1941. She started piano lessons at five and made rapid progress, performing concertos by Mozart and Beethoven flawlessly just three years later. Her family moved to Switzerland in 1955, and she studied with Madeleine Lipatti, Nikita Magaloff, and then, for 18 months, with Friedrich Gulda in Vienna after Argentine president Juan Perón arranged for diplomatic work for her family there. Argerich won the Geneva International Competition and the Ferruccio Busoni International Competition in 1957, and she made a well-regarded debut album in 1960, featuring music by Liszt, Prokofiev, Ravel, Brahms, and Chopin. However, her real breakthrough was a first prize at the Chopin International Festival in Warsaw in 1965; she was the first pianist from the Western hemisphere to triumph, and the win brought publicity similar to that which attended Van Cliburn's International Tchaikovsky Competition victory in Moscow in 1958.

After her early years, Argerich rarely gave solo concerts, sometimes saying that she felt lonely on-stage. She recorded concertos, mostly from the late Romantic and early modern periods, with most of the major European conductors. Argerich began a long association with the Deutsche Grammophon label in the 1970s, and her 1975 release featuring concertos by Prokofiev and Ravel, with the Berlin Philharmonic under Claudio Abbado, had an iconic cover photo showing the two in intense conversation. Her 1985 recording of Tchaikovsky's Piano Concerto No. 1 in B flat minor, Op. 23, with the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra under Charles Dutoit, was another classic. Dutoit was one of Argerich's three husbands; before him came composer Robert Chen, and after him pianist Stephen Kovacevich, and she had children with all three. Argerich recovered from a 1990 bout with malignant melanoma and a 1995 recurrence; she was cured by an experimental treatment at the John Wayne Cancer Institute and performed a Carnegie Hall concert to benefit the Institute. She has continued to give widely praised concerto performances into senior citizenhood, appearing at the BBC Proms in 2016 with conductor Daniel Barenboim in the Liszt Piano Concerto No. 1 in E flat major. She has also been an enthusiastic performer of chamber music and duo sonatas, appearing and recording with Kovacevich, pianist Nelson Freire, violinist Gidon Kremer, and other choice players. In her later years, Argerich was widely known for her leadership of the Progetto Martha Argerich at the Lugano Festival in Switzerland, where she performed with and nurtured the careers of many young musicians. That festival came to an end in 2016 after its sponsor was investigated for possible violations of Swiss banking laws, but in 2018, she curated a new festival mounted by the Hamburg Philharmonic, and she has continued to serve as director of the Argerich Music Festival in Beppu, Japan, which she created in 1996. In 2019, she had a busy schedule of concerts across Britain, Switzerland, Italy, and Germany. Her concerts generally take up the mainstream of the concerto and chamber repertory, from Mozart to the early 20th century, but she has performed more contemporary music by her compatriot Alberto Ginastera, Witold Lutoslawski, and others.

Argerich has continued to record for Deutsche Grammophon but has also appeared on Warner, Decca, and other labels. Her recording pace has hardly slowed in her 60s and 70s; in the year 2015 alone, 11 separate Argerich recordings appeared (some were reissues of earlier material). In 2020, Argerich was heard on a new recording of Beethoven's Piano Concerto No. 2 in B flat major, Op. 19, with conductor Seiji Ozawa and his Mito Chamber Orchestra in Japan. By that time, her catalog included at least 175 recordings. ~ James Manheim

Known for his performances of contemporary music, violinist Michael Barenboim has established a career independent of that of his famous father, conductor Daniel Barenboim. The two have also performed and recorded together.

The son of Daniel Barenboim and pianist Yelena Bashkirova (and the brother of hip-hop producer David Barenboim), Michael Barenboim was born in Paris in 1985. He began playing the piano at age four and switched to the violin when his family moved to Berlin in 1992. His teachers there were Abraham Jaffe and Axel Wilczok. Michael's professional career began early, and that was due not only to his father's influence but to his pathbreaking spirit: when he was 15, he was recruited for the West-Eastern Divan Orchestra, his father's ensemble that united Palestinian and Israeli musicians and was named for a book of poetry by J.W. von Goethe that explored themes from the Islamic world. The younger Barenboim distinguished himself in that orchestra and, in 2003, was named its concertmaster. He has continued in that role while developing a solo career independent of his father's work.

Barenboim has appeared with the Berlin Philharmonic (playing Schoenberg's Violin Concerto, Op. 36), the Chicago Symphony, the Israel Philharmonic, the Bavarian Radio Symphony, and the Guangzhou and Shanghai Symphony Orchestras, among many other major ensembles in Europe and elsewhere. His solo recitals have been heard at the Barbican and Wigmore Hall in London, Carnegie Hall in New York, and the Pierre Boulez Saal in Berlin. Barenboim has collaborated with Boulez in performances and has recorded both of his solo Anthèmes for the Accentus label. He is also an enthusiastic chamber player and, in 2018, recorded an album of Mozart piano quartets with his father, Yulia Deyneka, and Kian Soltani for the Deutsche Grammophon label. Permutations of that group recorded albums of piano trios by Mozart and Beethoven, also on Deutsche Grammophon, and father and son joined with pianist Martha Argerich and the Staatskapelle Berlin for an album of works by Debussy in 2021. As an educator, Barenboim has given many master classes and serves as head of chamber music at the Barenboim-Said Academy in Berlin. In 2023, he recorded Elgar's Violin Concerto in B minor, Op. 61, with the Philharmonia Orchestra under conductor Alessandro Crudele on the Linn Records label. ~ James Manheim

Cellist Kian Soltani emerged from Daniel Barenboim's West-Eastern Divan Orchestra, in which he served as principal cellist. He then began what has become a flourishing solo career. Signed to the Deutsche Grammophon label, he has been exceptionally active as a recording artist, issuing seven albums on the label in three years. In 2024, he released the album Schumann.

Soltani was born in Bregenz, Austria, on June 3, 1992. He is of Iranian background and came from a family of musicians. Soltani took up the cello at age four and showed major talent as a child, enrolling at the Basel Music Academy when he was 12. His teacher there was Ivan Monighetti. Soltani moved on to the Kronberg Academy in Germany's Taunus region, where he benefited from scholarship support from the Anne-Sophie Mutter Foundation and was a member of the Young Soloists' Program. He also studied at Liechtenstein's International Music Academy. Soltani made an impressive debut at age 19 at the Goldener Saal at Vienna's venerable Musikverein society, following it up with first prizes at the Paulo Cello Competition in Helsinki, the Karl Davidoff Competition in Latvia, and the Antonio Janigro Competition in Croatia.

After joining the West-Eastern Divan Orchestra, conductor Daniel Barenboim's pioneering ensemble uniting Israeli and Arab musicians, Soltani took a major role when he appeared as soloist in the Beethoven Triple Concerto, Op. 56, with Barenboim on piano, during the orchestra's 2015 tour; they performed at the Lucerne and Salzburg Festivals and the Waldbühnen summer concert in Berlin. That led to other solo appearances at the BBC Proms and with such groups as the Frankfurt Radio Symphony Orchestra, Tonhalle Orchester Zürich, and the Orchestre de Paris. Soltani took a solo role in Strauss' Don Quixote under Barenboim in the West-Eastern Divan's 2017 tour and made a series of major appearances in Germany, Austria, and France during the 2017-2018 season.

In 2017, he was signed to the Deutsche Grammophon label, and early in 2018, he released his debut album, Home, featuring works by Schubert and Schumann as well as his own folk song settings and those by Iranian composer Reza Vali. Soltani continued to be prominently featured in West-Eastern Divan Orchestra concerts into the early 2020s, and his solo career has grown as he has made concerto appearances with such groups as the Munich Philharmonic, Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia, and the ORF Vienna Radio Symphony. His chamber music appearances have been notable as he has collaborated with Daniel and Michael Barenboim in trios, and with other players, including Lahav Shani and Renaud Capuçon. In 2020, Soltani released two albums, one of Beethoven's piano trios with the Barenboims and one of Dvořák's Cello Concerto in B minor, Op. 104, with the Staatskapelle Dresden. Soltani returned with the film music album Cello Unlimited in 2021. That was followed by Schumann in 2024, on which Soltani conducted the Camerata Salzburg from the cello. ~ James Manheim

The Staatskapelle Berlin, or Berlin State Orchestra, has an extraordinarily long history the reflects much of the central European history of music in its relationship to the state. Since the ascension of international superstar conductor Daniel Barenboim to the podium in 1992, the group has emerged as a major force on the international concert and recording scene. Several dates may be given for the founding of what became the Staatskapelle Berlin, but it took shape in the middle and late 16th century as the court of the Elector of Brandenburg developed new musical ensembles and began to forge close ties with the Prussian monarchy. In 1701 it became the Royal Prussian Court Orchestra, and as such attracted top musicians including Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach and Johann Joachim Quantz. In 1783 the orchestra gave one of the first modern symphonic concerts, independently of the court, at the Hotel Paris, and through the 19th century it was a giant of European musical life, with conductors including Spontini, Meyerbeer, and, from 1899 to 1913, Richard Strauss. For all of this period, and down to the present day, the orchestra also served as the house orchestra of the Royal Court Opera, established in 1742 by Frederick the Great and in modern times renamed the Berlin State Opera. The same conductor serves as Staatskapellmeister or state music director of both ensembles. During World War II, Herbert von Karajan served as music director. After the war, due to its location in East Berlin, the orchestra came under the control of what would become East Germany. It maintained some connections with the non-Communist West; its conductor from 1964 to 1990 was the Austrian Otmar Suitner, who was able to travel fairly freely between East and West. After German reunification, Daniel Barenboim became the orchestra's first non-German conductor in modern times and has been successful in bringing the orchestra's international profile to a new level. The orchestra made its first appearance at the BBC Proms in 2013 (in a cycle of Wagner's Ring operas), and in 2017 performed a complete cycle of Bruckner's symphonies at Carnegie Hall in New York (the first-ever such cycle mounted in the U.S.). The orchestra has recorded prolifically for Deutsche Grammophon, Decca, Teldec, Denon, Berlin Classics, and Warner Classics, among other labels, releasing a set of Brahms' four symphonies with Barenboim conducting in 2018. ~ James Manheim