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Tate Modern Turbine Hall
The standing ovation began before Daniel Barenboim had played a note. On Friday night, to a crowd of about 1,100 who only learned of this impromptu free concert three days earlier, the legendary pianist celebrated more than 60 years since his performing debut with a quixotic recital in Tate Modern's Turbine Hall. If Barenboim wanted, as he said, to drag the classics "out of the ivory tower", where at least he might be guaranteed a good acoustic, he succeeded. The sound was not dissimilar to a public swimming pool, but everyone listened attentively and no one minded.
"Quite frankly I was tickled at the idea of playing here," he said, interrupting his all-Chopin programme with his characteristically fluent chat and sharp humour. "What would you like me to play? A polonaise? A waltz?" he challenged. "Bach," replied one brave soul. "Bach? I am here to play Chopin. I will play his Minute Waltz. Is that okay?" "Yes," roared the crowd.
A man who thrives on living dangerously, whether conducting the West-Eastern Divan orchestra in Palestine or playing Wagner in Israel, Barenboim had told no one what was on the programme, apart from the slow movement of Chopin's Second Piano Concerto. Moments before the start of the concert, no one could find music stands. Relief supplies were drafted in from the Southbank Centre upriver. With the glistening, rippling runs and arpeggios at which he excels, he played a chamber arrangement, accompanied by players from his Berlin Staatskapelle orchestra.
Born in Buenos Aires in 1942, Barenboim gave his first official concert there at the age of seven. London has been a focus of his playing and conducting career since the 1960s when he and his cellist wife, the late Jacqueline du Pré, gave classical music a new glamour and vitality. Now based primarily at the Staatsoper, Berlin, he is an indefatigable ambassador for music's power to cross boundaries, races and creeds. "Music is part of life, music is part of culture," he said. "Governments should put money into teaching music to all, from the kindergarten on." This urgent cry was also heard at the influential Salzburg Global Seminar on music this week.
But there is no such thing as a free concert: Barenboim was here to promote three new CDs on the Universal label, as well as concerts in June at Wigmore Hall and at the Festival Hall – "where I first played 55 years ago, and still I am surprised that people want to come". Not that he need worry – 8,000 people applied for the 400 seats while 700 more watched a live relay in the hall below, where Ai Weiwei's 100 million Sunflower Seeds are on show. Alex Beard, Tate deputy director, spoke briefly to remind us of the detained Chinese artist's plight. Barenboim, a citizen of the world and United Nations Messenger of Peace, led the applause.
For him, all music aspires to the political. "I've learned more about living from music than the other way round," he said. Finally, the pure expression of emotion is all that counts. As he played Chopin's D flat Nocturne, its simple song and silken dissonances sounding in the ghostly gloom of the Turbine Hall, no one stirred. Sixty years on, he still plays the piano with boyish curiosity, as if the instrument had just been invented.
