Abbado did not just deliver music, he was possessed by it
Rupert Christiansen looks back at an Italian maestro whose power over the orchestra never faltered
With my hand on my heart, I would stand up and confess that for my money Claudio Abbado ranks as the greatest conductor of my lifetime. I have certainly never witnessed anyone on the podium who was so purely and selflessly a vessel for the music – so possessed by it, so in thrall to it.
A man of the Left and a humanist, he loved the democratic and youthful atmosphere of the Proms, conducting 30 of its concerts between 1967 and 2007, the last of which can be heard on Radio 3 tonight. I remember being in the Albert Hall watching him conduct Debussy’s La Mer and realising that he was a man lost in a sort of ecstasy of love. He was far from histrionic in gesture and at times he seemed scarcely to give out a clear beat – yet his benign power over the orchestra never faltered.
As well as that wonderful La Mer, I particularly recall a Proms performance of Schubert’s Great C major Symphony with the Vienna Philharmonic that was miraculously at ease with itself – sunlit, buoyant, fluent – as well as a magnificently expansive interpretation of Mahler 1. His range was astonishingly wide: but what a pity that, to my knowledge, English music left him cold – he could have done so much with Elgar.
I met him once socially, when he merely mumbled politely and looked so uncomfortable that I made my excuses; and once when I interviewed him before a production of Pelléas et Mélisande at Covent Garden. How long can you give me? I asked when I entered the room to find him staring vacantly out of the window. About 15 minutes, he replied gruffly. At first, it was like getting blood out of a stone – monosyllables, shrugs, silences – but as I advanced gingerly, he gradually warmed and opened up, and after an hour I ended up the recipient of his meltingly sweet smile and sincere handshake.
He was a shy man, a diffident man – though I think there was sly calculation in the mix too. Another telling memory I have is of eavesdropping on him as he rehearsed Verdi’s Requiem in Edinburgh’s Usher
I have certainly never witnessed anyone so purely and selflessly a vessel for the music
Hall with the London Symphony Orchestra, of which at that time he was music director.
Things were not going well and he was clearly getting tetchy. But what I found fascinating is that he appeared incapable of addressing the players directly – all his instructions were whispered to the Leader sitting on his left, who then transmitted them: “Mr Abbado asks that the cellos concentrate more” or “Mr Abbado thinks the trumpets came in too late at Bar 48”. There seemed to be no real bond of trust or authority between orchestra and conductor – and yet what emerged in performance was sublime. As a Milanese, opera coursed through his blood, and somehow he weathered the tensions and frustrations it inevitably entails during his long period at the helm of La Scala between 1971 and 1986. There were some great achievements: I shall never forget his noble conducting of the marvellously beautiful production of Simon Boccanegra, directed by his great friend Giorgio Strehler, that visited Covent Garden in 1976 and happily commemorated in an unsurpassable recording.
During lockdown I have been rifling through my neglected CD collection, seeking something beyond flash and brilliance. Abbado has come up trumps every time. There was never anything heavy or laboured about his conducting: he didn’t make music, he lived and breathed it.
Claudio Abbado’s final Proms performance, from 2007, airs today on BBC Radio 3 as part of First Night of the
BBC Proms 2020 from 7pm