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CHICAGO - As Daniel Barenboim's campaign of world conquest progresses, musical capital by capital, it seems clear that his fabled career has become less and less about the music, more and more about power.
From the beginnings of his musical life as an astonishing wunderkind of the piano to his controversial music directorship of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, culminating in four eventful weeks of concerts here beginning Thursday, his rise to superstardom has been fueled by a restless, insatiable ambition.
The polymath conductor, pianist, educator, lecturer, author and humanitarian has wanted it all.
Now the hugely gifted, hugely ambitious Barenboim has it all.
Two weeks ago, Italian sources tipped the news that Barenboim, 63, soon will undertake a "continuous and important commitment" to Milan's Teatro alla Scala, the world's oldest and most prestigious opera house. The deal was formally announced at a press conference there last week.
La Scala appeared to have stopped short of awarding the Argentine-born Israeli conductor the theater's top job of music director. That post was vacated a year ago by the stormy departure of Italian maestro Riccardo Muti, 64, who clashed with the Scala orchestra and other workers. It is likely to remain open for several years until a full-fledged successor can be engaged.
That has a familiar ring to it. Barenboim's appointment at La Scala, like the CSO's recent appointment of Bernard Haitink as principal conductor and Pierre Boulez as conductor emeritus, buys the respective institutions time to fill two high-profile posts without rushing to make choices they might regret.
Barenboim's prominent role in La Scala's future opens the door to a possible ascendancy to Muti's former post somewhere down the line. A couple of major successes there could cinch it for him.
One scenario has Barenboim tiring of his dual allegiance to Milan and Berlin, where he continues to serve as general music director of the Deutsche Staatsoper unter den Linden, the oldest of the city's three opera companies, and chief conductor of its resident orchestra, the Berlin Staatskapelle.
A second scenario has Berlin tiring of sharing Barenboim, who's run the theater's artistic affairs for the last 14 years, with La Scala.
The Berliner Morgenpost wondered if Barenboim has "lost his appetite for a house that has to fight for each euro and is worn down by unrealistic cuts and may eventually fall victim to a fusion" with the rival Deutsche Oper.
At any rate, not since the heyday of the Austrian maestro Herbert von Karajan does any conductor stand to wield so much influence on the musical life of Europe as Barenboim most likely will by decade's end. Karajan occupied thrones in Berlin, Vienna, Salzburg, Milan and Paris from the 1960s nearly up to his death in 1989, at 81.
Now it's Barenboim's turn to be sitting pretty atop the music world.
The La Scala appointment no doubt makes it that much easier for him to turn his back on Chicago once he departs the Chicago Symphony following his third and final "farewell concert" June 17.
Already Barenboim has declared his intention of not returning to the CSO in any capacity, insisting with a straight face that he's "never been a guest conductor." (Tell that to La Scala. Tell that to the Berlin Philharmonic, where he is a frequent visitor to Simon Rattle's podium. Tell that to CSO members who played under Barenboim from 1970 to 1989 when he was a regular guest at Orchestra Hall.)
Whoever follows him at the Chicago Symphony will, I hope, lead the CSO with greater musical consistency and greater commitment to the Chicago audience and to the city itself. We need a music director who will use the greatness of our orchestra to advance the music above career and ego.
Georg Solti, who preceded Barenboim at the CSO, also was accused of exploiting his Chicago position to further his musical reputation in Europe. The allegation had some merit, but it was also true that the orchestra took full advantage of Solti's European eminence.
Solti could get away with arrogant assertions of will, on and off the podium, because the quality of his leadership was unassailable. And he packed concert halls, something Barenboim seldom has been able to do as a conductor.
I have long argued that the CSO should look for a music director who has not yet achieved international star status; and that it would help if that conductor were a gifted American who embraces the richness and diversity of American culture rather than disparaging American society and its educational system, as does the Eurocentric Barenboim.
And I worry that the Chicago Symphony, after a long and painstaking search, once again will pin its artistic future on another globe-hopping, headline-grabbing baton superstar with divided loyalties similar to Barenboim's. I hope I will be proved wrong.
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John von Rhein: jvonrhein@tribune.com
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(c) 2006, Chicago Tribune. Distributed by Knight Ridder/Tribune News Service.
