The almost unfathomable legacy of Claudio Abbado

As if he were emulating the narrator of Moby Dick, Claudio Abbado began his relationship with the orchestras he directed with the same phrase: “Call me Claudio.” When he succeeded Herbert von Karajan as chief conductor of the Berlin Philharmonic in 1989, he began his first rehearsal with a short variation that has also gone down in history: “I am Claudio: for everyone.” In a world prone like few others to what in the commercial legal field is called “abuse of a dominant position” and in which, on the other hand, the noun “Teacher” is used without restraint and is manipulated to the point of nausea, the Milanese musician He was always consistent with his political ideas and encouraged work among equals, without hierarchies, with the podium as a simple stage device to grant visibility, not to mark distances or confer privileges, and the baton as an instrument of precision, not power.

It was in this way, democratically and friendly, that he forged a very close relationship with the handful of orchestras that illuminated his career – the London and Chicago Symphonies, the Vienna and Berlin Philharmonics, the titular group of the Teatro alla Scala: there is nothing – or how he encouraged himself to create a great pan-European youth orchestra, which he named after his beloved Gustav Mahler, the seed of the Mahler Chamber Orchestra. In his final years, with his body riddled with stomach cancer, he realized the ideal of conducting surrounded almost exclusively by friends – world-class soloists, leading string quartets, first music stands of centenary orchestras – who made pilgrimages year after year to the Festival. from Lucerne to share the privilege of making what we could call symphonic chamber music with his friend Claudio. Since, despite his extensive international biography, he always acted as an Italian, and was one through and through, ten years before his death he also founded the Mozart Orchestra in his country, another plurinational project based in Bologna that allowed him to peer into the historicist interpretive practices and extend their repertoire towards the Baroque and Classicism with more intimate instrumental templates.

Orchestra conductors did not join singers and instrumentalists as mass idols until the 20th century and the name of Claudio Abbado cannot be missing from any selective list of the greatest of our time. Everyone has had, sooner or later, their recording legacy published in the form of opera omniacall them Wilhelm Furtwängler, Otto Klemperer, Pierre Boulez, Carlos Kleiber or Sir John Barbirolli. On the occasion of the ninetieth anniversary of his birth, an immense box has been published with all the recordings made for Deutsche Grammophon and Decca which, in quantity (no less than 257 CDs and 8 DVDs) and quality, reveals the versatility and documents the director's career. Italian in a repertoire that ranges from Bach, Vivaldi and Pergolesi to the still happily alive György Kurtág, Wolfgang Rihm and Salvatore Sciarrino: no one can give more. A few days after ten years of a death that left many putative orphans behind, this authentic flood of music now within our reach allows us to put in perspective the legacy of a director who always had two essential allies to ascend to Olympus. : an outstanding, virtuosic, dazzling technique, the foundations of which were laid during his years of training in Hans Swarowsky's class in Vienna, but which he never stopped perfecting, and a personal magnetism – championed by an easy, frank and generous smile – that instantly cast a spell on instrumentalists, singers and audiences alike.

With good judgment, Deutsche Grammophon has arranged the albums – recorded over almost half a century, between 1966 and 2013 – in alphabetical order of composers, from Bach to Wagner, leaving compilations or mixed programs for last. Abbado evolved throughout his career, of course, and he also did not always show the same affinity for all composers. His greatest achievements are probably concentrated in Mahler, with whom he always had a natural, organic connection, and Verdi, whom he carried in his blood as a good Milanese. From the first, several of his works are collected here. lieder and all his symphonies, some in various versions, such as two of the First, three of the Second and two of the Third, of which the one recorded with the Vienna Philharmonic in 1980 and Jessye Norman as soloist remains an unparalleled monument. Something similar happens with your Macbeth or his Simon Boccanegrathe zenith of his years scaligeri and supreme examples of Abbado's early maturity, when his name was synonymous with strength, impetus and a rhythmic precision that was also captured in a handful of portentous recordings of music by Béla Bartók (The Wonderful Mandarin, Portraits op. 5, Piano Concertos) and Sergei Prokofiev (Aleksander Nevsky, Lieutenant Kijé).

His Berlin period, in which he managed to democratize an orchestra accustomed to Karajan's dictatorial ways and, above all, to heeling its repertoire towards the 20th century, is profusely represented in this edition. His version of the piano concerto by Schönberg (with his friend Maurizio Pollini), two jewels by Kurtág (Grabstein für Stephan and Stele) either Gruppen of Stockhausen. Another composer with whom Abbado seemed to identify as an equal is Alban Berg and many of the recordings he made in Vienna (Wozzeck, Der Weinthe Three pieces for orchestrathe suite of Lulu or the Altenberg-Lieder) once again combine three of their greatest virtues: emotional intensity, transparent textures and rhythmic rigor. They are not enough for him to take flight in the same way with the classics, especially Beethoven, profusely represented with two complete symphonic cycles (in Berlin and Vienna) and a total of 22 albums. The Italian never disappoints, of course, and frequently gives glorious details or passages, but neither his Beethoven, nor his Brahms, nor his Bruckner, reach the level of the aforementioned composers, although the Ninth by the Austrian from Lucerne is the most similar to a will.

Among the soloists he accompanied, there are here from all generations, from Serkin to Kissin, from Milstein to Mintz, from Brendel to Grimaud, from Accardo to Mullova, from Gulda to Pires, and with all of them he proves to be wise, generous and empathetic, just as with his singers, many of whom triumphed with him, such as Teresa Berganza in the Carmen and The Cenerentola of the Edinburgh Festival or Il barbiere di Siviglia from Milan. Abbado felt very comfortable in the pit, he worked miracles in the temples of the Staatsoper in Vienna and La Scala in Milan and of the 21 complete operas that this box contains, one cannot fail to praise his ineffably poetic nature. Pelléas and Mélisande of Debussy, the desolate intensity of From the house of the dead of Janáček and an enthusiastic and irresistible Fierrabras of Schubert, a rarity that he defends with contagious conviction and energy.

Eight DVDs also allow him to see him conduct both opera and orchestral music. Many of the recordings, especially in his last stage, were made live and in the contemporaries of his illness a new tendency is perceived to perhaps overly embellish the sound, to soften the sharp angles of yesteryear, which could be understood as a refuge, a balm with which to mitigate or sweeten the suffering during the long years in which he had to live daily with pain and physical weakness. Here is encapsulated almost an entire lifetime of dedication to music: it requires long hours of listening, yes, but the endless wonders that this magical box contain
s more than reward them.

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