'I thought if it can be heard on the ring of a telephone, why can't it be played in a concert hall?' he explained. Barenboim said he had decided to defy the taboo on Wagner when at a news conference he was interrupted by the ringing of a cell phone to the tune of Wagner's ''Ride of the Valkyries''. Wagner's music has been taboo in Israel, because Adolf Hitler's theories of racial purity and extermination of Jews drew partly from Wagner's anti-Semitic writings. The concert sparked an outcry, with Barenboim being branded as a fascist by some Israelis. On July 7, 2001, Barenboim led the Berlin Staatskapelle in part of Wagner's opera Tristan und Isolde at the Israel Festival in Jerusalem. He is also music director of the Berlin State Opera, a position he has held since 1992. Barenboim is currently the music director of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, a position he took up in 1991, following Sir Georg Solti. His Bayreuth debut occurred in 1981, and he has conducted at the Festival up to 1999. In 1967 he made his debut as a conductor. He made his debut as a pianist in 1952 and his first recordings in 1954. In 1955 he studied harmony with Nadia Boulanger in Paris.

During that summer he met and played for Wilhelm Furtwängler. Two years later, in the summer of 1954, his parents brought him to Salzburg to take part in conducting classes. In 1952, the Barenboim family moved to Israel. He started piano lessons at the age of five, and when he was only seven years old, he gave his first formal concert in Buenos Aires.

Daniel Barenboim was born in Argentina to Russian-Jewish parents.

Conductor of the metropolitan opera