A few years ago, I hooked up with a BBC team in Berlin to record a programme with Daniel Barenboim. We were shown in to his spartan offices at the Staatsoper and, without preliminaries, I conducted an interview with him across a low table for 45 minutes. When our time was up, Barenboim rose and left. I am not even sure if we shook hands.
Knowing him from previous encounters, I was not particularly bothered. What did shock me was the sight of my BBC colleagues, their faces white with stress, their limbs rendered catatonic. No one creates tension in a room like Daniel Barenboim.
Last month, seven musicians in his Staatsoper orchestra complained of a threatening atmosphere at work and added charges of bullying which, in post-#MeToo times, have to be taken very seriously. One man, the principal timpanist, said things got so bad he had to be put on medication.
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