Abbado… it’s been 10 years
OrchestrasJanuary 20 marks the tenth anniversary of the death of Claudio Abbado. He was 80 and had been battling cancer for 15 years but he never seemed old or stale and his death marked a watershed of sorts. Without Abbado, the podium lacked a spiritual leader.
The world has changed immeasurably since he has gone. Maestros have become midgets and orchestras have learned to develop their own brand instead of huddling behind the aura of their music director.
Arte, the Franco-German TV channel, will show Abbado concerts and films from January 20 to February 19.
The London Symphony Orchestra and Berlin Philharmonic, with which he spent a third of his life, appear to have forgotten him. There may yet be some acknowledgement from La Scala.
Life is short, posterity shorter still.
Today is January 11th …
There just ain’t no love for DWEMs these days.
Deutsche Gramophon have recently brought out a massive Abbado CD box. So his legacy will continue to live on in their products at least. Maybe on streaming sites as well.
During the last year there was a very good book in italian “Ascoltare il silenzio” I don’t think they translate it in english or german. I remeber an interview of Chailly in it. There was also a very good documentary of la Rai about when he was at la Scala and when refused to play Puccini for some reasons I never understood like the musicians of this orchestra.
He seemed a nice person.
Well he didn’t go around punching singers at least.
A nice person? Especially not recognizing a child he got out of marriage for some time….or having communist sympathy in his youth and selling seats I couldn’t afford ….I don’t care much actually, trying not to judge artist on a moral point of view because I couldn’t appreciate Bohm or Karajan anymore or even Bernstein who seems the best guy to have a talk with but the worth to live with.. …
Our time seems absolutely unable to produce any genius, because no genius was a nice person probably and that’s mandatory…I don’t think neither Abbado was a genius but I appreciate his move of leaving BPO and search for lighter sound.
My problem with him was more too much Mahler… He really finished to impose him in concert halls…even he was a first rate brucknerian, playing a lot 1st symphony in which you have all Bruckner already…his Beethoven or Brahms was not that interesting and he could never do right a Tchaikovsky symphony ( except maybe his recording of playful 2nd for DGG, but 4, 5, 6 were a miss, I wish I could hear some lives though) , which is strange because he got some of Mahler s turmoil. Maybe because he was from northern Italy, too aristocratic, you need to deal with your moujik and aristocratic side when you play Tchaikovsky.
Sadly sickness gave him a supplément d’âme he didn’t have healthy….of course he would be a giant in the conducting world today, which he wasn’t totally….
“Brahms was not that interesting”.
His DG brahms cycle with BPO is totally awesome. I still listen to it all the time. Late 80’s early 90’s?
Incomprehensible.
But reticent: he had to be persuaded to attend DG press functions, and rarely ‘mingled’. But he could be firm, not allowing DG to continue with a compilation of “Mahler hits”; and a Mozart concerto recording was cancelled as he disapproved of the soloist’s cadenza choice.
“Nice?!?” Thank you Mr. Lebrecht for your “nice” words – at last a post that everyone reading SD would (should) concur with… (With the possible exception of Mr. Boxwell…)
10 years… Recently I was very happy to find a rare DG box with all the records of the Boston Orchestra. there’s a fantastic record from the end of the 60’s with Abbado and the BSO, with a Scriabin “Poème de l’extase”. I heard that in circle during the last weeks. The Mussorgsy album he did was very good also. We have not finnished to discover Abbado.
Would that today we had half of someone nearly half as musically elegant and aristocratic as he.
You are wrong – Claudio Abbado will never be forgotten – there is so much of his music preserved –
Try to watch the only Waldbühne concert he did. one evening it was raining all the time… He was smiling a thing he did not realy frequently.
Chicago’s failure to engage him to replace Solti remains a disgusting stain on the history of that orchestra. His music-making with the CSO was sublime in every way.
It wasn’t necessarily a failure on CSO’s part; the musicians held a vote, and the majority of them happened to rank Barenboim as their top preference. A mistake? Yes. But not exactly a “failure.”
Also, Abbado was being strongly considered by the NY Philharmonic as Mehta’s replacement around the same time, but ultimately decided to go to Berlin. I’m sure he felt more at home in Europe, where there weren’t any language barriers, where he could travel to guest-conduct more easily/frequently, and where it must have been more lucrative too.
I always heard that that vote came out the other way around. 70 for Abbado, 30 for Barenboim.
All his Mahler symphonies are on youtube.
It’s sad that these two orchestras don’t hold up to their legends , even Scala
Seeing him and the BPO perform Mahler’s 9th live in NYC during ’99 remains one of the great experiences of my life.
I was fortunate enough to be a member of the London Symphony Chorus for five years during Claudio Abbado’s tenure as chief conductor. I doubt if any of us will ever forget him, or any of the wide range of works we performed under his baton. Highlights were Mahler ll and lll, which we also took to the Theatre des Champs-Elysées in Paris, Bruckner Te Deum at the Flanders Festival in a huge church in Ghent and, for the ladies of the chorus, Sirènes from Debussy’s triptych : Nuages, Fêtes, Sirènes at the concert hall in Brussels, where he had us seated amongst the orchestra ( I was in the 2nd violin section ). That was magical!
In London, LSO/LSC concerts were usually in the Royal Festival Hall or the Barbican but also at the Proms in the Albert Hall. Singing in Abbado’s Verdi Requiem there was thrilling, and he brought a fantastic line-up of soloists : Margaret Price, Mirella Freni, José Carreras and Nicolai Ghiaurov. Sadly, our performance wasn’t recorded; that was later the same year at the Edinburgh Festival with 2 different soloists. I still treasure my vocal score with all five autographs. We did record Prokofiev’s Alexander Nevsky, not at our Festival Hall concert but in a long mid-week session in Watford Town Hall, safely far away from the interruptions of the London Underground. That recording won a Grand Prix du Disque. Abbado loved working with us, maybe because, as amateurs, we were always happy to keep rehearsing till he was absolutely satisfied – in contrast with the professional choruses in Vienna and Milan! He was inspiring and brought out the very best in us, time after time.
I concur with all that, Anna!
I was lucky enough still to be in the Chorus when we did Mahler 3 with the Lucerne Festival Orchestra at the proms a few years ago. Abbado was obviously very ill at that time, and the whole performance had a valedictory feel. The last movement had many of us in tears. I was so glad I had sneaked my daughter Chloe in as an “extra” and we both count that performance as one of the greatest we had ever taken part in.
CA was the genuine ‘Maestro’- a great conductor & nice human being also- the 2 don’t always go together.
How has Berlin forgotten him? True, much of today’s orchestra didn’t play with him. But there’s a decent amount of his material on the DCH.
I will always be grateful that, as a young student at the Curtis Institute of Music in the late 70’s, I was given the opportunity, and had the privilege, of sitting in the bassoon section of the student orchestra and playing for Maestro Abbado. He, amongst others who visited us from up the street while working at the Academy of Music, set the tone for many a young player to strive for something bigger than ourselves. He helped shape my career. For that I can only be thankful.
Without Abbado, the podium lacked a spiritual leader?
Isn’t that a slight on your good friend Mariss? Not to mention I. Fischer and Bychkov today?
His Orchestra Mozart recording of the JSB Brandenburg’s is one of my favourites.
Berlin has definitely not forgotten Abbado. This weekend, the Berlin Philharmonic and Daniel Harding will perform a programme featuring Jörg Widmann’s Viola Concerto and Anton Bruckner’s 4th Symphony, and it says on their website:
“The Berliner Philharmoniker, Daniel Harding, and Antoine Tamestit dedicate these concerts to the memory of Claudio Abbado (1933-2014)”