...and many more of them!
Happy 80th Birthday, Claudio Abbado
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from me too...
... though Claudio A being 80 is something that makes me particularly aware of the haste with which tempus fugit When I was getting into music, he was a dynamic young conductor, a glamorous change from the fuddy-duddy Klemperers, Beechams &c. depicted on my parents' LPs... For Claudio to be 80 means... I must be getting old too..."...the isle is full of noises,
Sounds and sweet airs, that give delight and hurt not.
Sometimes a thousand twangling instruments
Will hum about mine ears, and sometime voices..."
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80 perhaps, but an inspirational example of a musician who improves as he gets older. A few days ago I watched a performance of Bruckner's 5th with the Lucerne Festival Orchestra and was astonished by it. In fact, all of his recent Mahler and Bruckner from Lucerne are extraordinarily good.
Happy birthday, Claudio. You are magnificent!
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I think that I've been at more wonderful concerts conducted by Il Beato Claudio than by anyone else (even Bernard Haitink). From the most exciting Tchaikovsky 4th I've ever heard (with the LSO) in the 1970s through Mahler's 9th with the BPO in the RAH to last year's sublime Bruckner 5th (with the Lucerne band), there have been many memorable occasions. It's his work with young musicians, though, that really sticks in my mind (Guerrelieder; Mahler's 7th; the Ravel G major Concerto with Martha Argerich; Bruckner's 9th ......... ). All marked by astonishingly good orchestral playing and his consummate musicianship. So, I raise a toast to the great man: felice 80 ° compleanno, Maestro!
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amateur51
In the 1970s London's concert scene appeared to be overtaken by two Italian stickmeisters, Abbado and Muti. They each sported very beautiful shiny dark brown/shiny hair cut in such away that no matter how much violence was done to the air by their arms & stick, their hair fell natuirally back into place. As a curly-headed Celt I was terrifically impressed!
My early Abbado/LSO concerts included a concert (probably several) with Pollini in which all three Bartok piano concertos were performed - what a revelation those performances were.
After attending a performance of Mahler symphony no 6 by BPO with von Karajan in which the cow bells were played back on a reel-to-reel tape recorder and the hammer blows were struck with a mighty wooden mallet on a mightier wooden anvil I was keen to seen it soon after played by LSO and Abbado. From the off, those insistebnt trudges, I was scouring the view of the stage for signs of an anvil and a hammer but not a sign. Perhaps they were brought on later? but no, as the final movement wound itself up and down and up again I watched in wonderment as a player left the percussion section, moved to the level below, picked up an edge of a floor board and held it raised with his foot on it too, and on Abbado's signal he slammed it back down again. It made a wonderful noise but something of the Berlin spectacle was lost
Happy Birthday Maestro Abbado
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I first saw Abbado at an LSO performance of Mahler 6 on March 21 1978 (perhaps the same one that AM51 attended - there was a repeat on March 26) and thereafter attended many of his concerts in London as well as on tour with the LSO in Vienna, Venice and Berlin. There were outstanding concerts with the BPO, VPO and Locerne FO that I will never forget. I'm lucky to already have my ticket for an Orchestra Mozart concert in London on October 1.
I think that Haitink is probably the only conductor I've seen more than Abbado."The sound is the handwriting of the conductor" - Bernard Haitink
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