Despite these disappointments, Barenboim’s visit was anything but a failure for many Harvard students, especially members of the Harvard-Radcliffe Orchestra (HRO).

In addition to teaching a master class, Barenboim had lunch with students, and gave an open rehearsal with the HRO. He conducted Tchaikovsky’s Sixth Symphony.

"Talking to a lot of the orchestra members afterwards, the consensus was that it’s the best the orchestra has ever sounded," said Davone J. Tines ’09, a violinist in the HRO.

Rather than cue the orchestra as conductors normally do by calling out a measure number, Barenboim would whistle the important melodic phrase. "It’s just a more intuitive way of going into the music," Tines said.

He suggested that Barenboim’s brilliance as a conductor lies in the attention he gives to the score and to the musicians he is leading.

"It’s not any secret or magic trick," Tines said. "But it’s just his presence. It’s like ‘all right guys, you know what you’re supposed to do. Just do it.’"

"Conducting is not meant to be a full-time profession," Barenboim lamented during a question and answer session. "Composers—Wagner, Brahms, all of them—played the piano and conducted."

Though it may seem ironic that Barenboim would speak out against musical specialization to such a specialized audience, the sentiment fits with the spirit of the Charles Eliot Norton Professorship of Poetry, which awards "prominent figures in poetry in the broadest sense."

During a question and answer session, Barenboim expressed a similar, gentle humility about the post of Norton professor of poetry.

One audience member asked Barenboim if he could tell a story about something funny that had happened during his career. He said, "Once, I was invited to give the Norton Lectures at Harvard."