RIP Claudio Abbado

[Marc]

Yes, sad news.

I remember watching him on the German telly about 10 years ago, very fragile, and I thought: Maestro Abbado won't be with us much longer. But his fighting spirit kept him going.

I especially rate him high as an opera conductor, and I will never forget the electrifying Mahler 9 he conducted during the Mahler Festival in Amsterdam, 1995 (broadcasted on the Dutch radio).

Rest In Peace, Maestro.

[Superhorn]

    A giant of the podium has passed .  I will never forget the concert in Carnegie hall I attended years ago with  maestro Abbado and
the Vienna Philharmonic .  They delivered a Bruckner 7th symphony which sounded not like an earthly orchestra , but one which one
would expect to hear in heaven .
   He has left us with so many wonderful recordings of music ranging from  Mozart to Luigi Nono . 

[Brahmsian]

    A giant of the podium has passed .  I will never forget the concert in Carnegie hall I attended years ago with  maestro Abbado and
the Vienna Philharmonic .  They delivered a Bruckner 7th symphony which sounded not like an earthly orchestra , but one which one
would expect to hear in heaven .

Oh my, that must have been an incredible experience!! 

[Mirror Image]

Sad news, another great Maestro parting to conduct the great big orchestra in the sky.  RIP Maestro Abbado.

My favourite Petrushka recording, that really fed my interest in wanting to explore Stravinsky's works more.

That whole set is fantastic. Some of the best Stravinsky I've heard actually. Outstanding Le sacre du printemps, Jeu de cartes, and Pulcinella as well.

[knight66]

He was a creator as well as an interpreter, the youth orchestra, no doubt he has inspired and had an impact on a lot of young musicians who will be working for many decades. It is a great part of his legacy.

Mike

[madaboutmahler]

Was so sad on hearing the news this morning.... one of my favourite conductors, a very inspirational musician. What a great man too.
Listening to some of his recordings tonight.. Schubert/Debussy/Ravel/Prokofiev.. all perfect to me.. showing such humane love and tender care.. This was a man who breathed music.. Tears in my eyes as I listen to his Le Jardin feerique.. It's heaven, where Claudio must be now, amongst the very finest of musicians in the last century. RIP.

[aquablob]

Sad. I'm glad he got an extra decade or so in there, thanks to modern medicine.

I'm honoring him by dipping my toes into his first LvB cycle (from the '80s with the VPO), which I've had on the back burner for a while.

[Herman]

Somehow, because one was expecting this for years and more acutely from his retirement in December, the news is even more of a blow.

He was one of the truly great conductors of the post-1960 era, with an enormous, virtually unlimited repertoire and an unique way of infecting all music with an uplifting lyricism. While other conductors talk about Mahler 9 as death pounding on one's doors, Abbado's 9th was about moving towards the light.

His smile, as he was enjoying the playing and encouraging the band, was so affecting.

He was a great champion of contemporary music and he will remembered as the man who started all these great youth and ad hoc orchestras.

[aquablob]

Sad. I'm glad he got an extra decade or so in there, thanks to modern medicine.

I'm honoring him by dipping my toes into his first LvB cycle (from the '80s with the VPO), which I've had on the back burner for a while.

...and done. Underrated set, I'd say!

[jochanaan]

He was masterful in all music. We'll all miss him.

[ritter]

In what is by now a rather touching tradition, next Monday the La Scala orchestra in Milan will perform the funeral march of Beethoven's Eroica (led by Barenboim) in the empty theatre (with open doors).

They've done this for Toscanini (led by Victor de Sabata), for Sabata (conductorless, as Gavazzeni apaprently said something to the effect that conducting on such an occasion was too high an honour for him), for Gavazzeni (led by Muti), for Giulini (Myung-Whun Chung as conductor), and now for Claudio... It's considered the greatest hommage to conductors closely related to this opera house..

[North Star]

Tribute by Daniel Barenboim

I knew Claudio Abbado from the early 1950s, when he was studying piano with Gulda at the Mozarteum in Salzburg. We both graduated from the conducting class in Siena in 1956 and since then we enjoyed a long musical and personal friendship. I have lots of memories of him, most recently of course his return to La Scala in 2012 where we appeared together in concerts. We have lost one of the great musicians of the last half-century and one of the few musicians who had a particularly close relation with the spirit of the music, and one that went beyond the boundaries of musical genres. In particular we must recognise his commitment to contemporary music and composers such as Nono, Ligeti and Kurtag, whose music he performed at the La Scala when he was music director there. One of Claudio Abbado's great achievements was to set up a number of youth orchestras. In this respect, he was a pioneer who worked with young musicians throughout his entire career, he supported and nurtured them. He sent signal to the world that young and inexperienced musicians can, with the right mindset and commitment play music at the very highest level. For this we must thank him.

[Cato]

From some years ago...I wrote the following under Your Greatest Concerts You Attended:

Berlin Philharmonic conducted by Claudio Abbado in Ann Arbor, Michigan in Beethoven's Fourth Symphony and Arnold Schoenberg's Pelleas und Melisande.  Both played with great excitement, and the latter, which can be a problematic score, was handled with the transparency of chamber music: the perfect performance of this work!

See:

http://www.good-music-guide.com/community/index.php?topic=13889.20

[Karl Henning]

From some years ago...I wrote the following under Your Greatest Concerts You Attended:

See:

http://www.good-music-guide.com/community/index.php?topic=13889.20

Very cool!

[bhodges]

The marvelous www.medici.tv is now showing Abbado's Mahler Ninth from the 2010 Lucerne Festival - FREE - until January 31.

I just dipped into it for a few minutes, but had to turn it off - don't have time to do the whole thing at the moment. But wow.

--Bruce

[North Star]

The marvelous www.medici.tv is now showing Abbado's Mahler Ninth from the 2010 Lucerne Festival - FREE - until January 31.

I just dipped into it for a few minutes, but had to turn it off - don't have time to do the whole thing at the moment. But wow.

--Bruce

Thanks for posting this, Bruce! Plenty of time to watch it, perhaps twice or even thrice. 

[bhodges]

Thanks for posting this, Bruce! Plenty of time to watch it, perhaps twice or even thrice. 

Hell, maybe a dozen times! (No, not really... ) But I must say, the first few minutes are incredibly intense. He must have at least entertained the thought, however briefly, that he might never conduct the piece again.

--Bruce

[ritter]

Hell, maybe a dozen times! (No, not really... ) But I must say, the first few minutes are incredibly intense. He must have at least entertained the thought, however briefly, that he might never conduct the piece again.

--Bruce

And the ending of this is out of this world....the music just groing more pppp, the lights of the hall being dimmed...and then a couple of minutes of slence after the music stops. So intense, so beautiful...

[North Star]

He must have at least entertained the thought, however briefly, that he might never conduct the piece again.

--Bruce

Most likely, indeed. But then again, this is probably true of all of his conducting after the cancer.

Listening now, the beginning is indeed intense!

[North Star]

These live recordings primarily document major TV concerts from these years. We hear the European Concerts initiated by Claudio Abbado, in which the Berliner Philharmoniker celebrate the anniversary of their founding on 1 May 1882 in a European cultural capital every year. Another benchmark of international music television are the New Year's Eve concerts of the Berliner Philharmoniker, in which Abbado regularly emphasized his standing as an opera conductor with prominent vocal soloists.

Our series also features important tour concerts, including a 1994 appearance at Suntory Hall in Tokyo, a performance of the Brahms Requiem in Vienna in 1998 and Abbado's acclaimed Beethoven symphony cycle in Rome from 2001. The collection is topped off with the documentary film from 1996 Die Stille nach der Musik (The silence that follows the music), which presents a candid portrait of Abbado the musician and the man.

Until further notice, no ticket will be necessary to access these recordings.

The Abbado era in the Digital Concert Hall

European Concert 1991 from Prague
European Concert 1994 from Meiningen
The Berliner Philharmoniker in Tokyo
European Concert 1996 from St. Petersburg
New Year's Eve Concert 1996 »Dances and Gypsy Tunes«
Johannes Brahms: Ein deutsches Requiem
New Year's Eve Concert 1997 »Tribute to Carmen«
European Concert 1998 from Stockholm
New Year's Eve Concert 1998 »Songs of Love and Desire«
W.A. Mozart: Requiem. Herbert von Karajan Memorial Concert
New Year's Eve Concert 1999 »Grand Finales«
Beethoven: Symphonies Nos. 1–8
Beethoven: Symphony No. 9 (European Concert 2000 from Berlin)
New Year's Eve Concert 2000 »Viva Verdi«
Beethoven: Chorfantasie / Mendelssohn: Symphony No. 2
European Concert 2002 from Palermo
Documentary »The silence that follows the music«