Claudio Abbado

The Abbado family for several generations enjoyed both wealth and respect in their community. Abbado's great-grandfather tarnished the family reputation by gambling away the family fortune. His son, Abbado's grandfather, became a professor at the University of Turin.[2] His grandfather re-established the family's reputation and also showed talent as an amateur musician.[3]

Born in Milan, Italy on 26 June 1933,[4] Claudio Abbado was the son of violinist Michelangelo Abbado,[3] and the brother of the musician Marcello Abbado (born 1926). His father, a professional violinist and a professor at the Giuseppe Verdi Conservatory, was his first piano teacher. His mother also was an adept pianist. Marcello Abbado later became a concert pianist, composer, and teacher at the Rossini Conservatory in Pesaro. His sister also exhibited talent in music, but did not pursue a musical career after her marriage. His other brother later became a successful architect.[2][5]

Abbado's childhood encompassed the Nazi occupation of Milan. During that time, Abbado's mother spent time in prison for harbouring a Jewish child.[6] This period solidified his anti-fascist political sentiments. Claudio himself is known for having a famous anecdote about how when he was just eleven years old he wrote "Viva Bartók" on a local wall which caught the attention of the Gestapo and sent them on the hunt for the culprit. His passionate opposition to fascism continued into his adult years.[4] However, his musical interests also developed, with attendance at performances at La Scala,[3] as well as orchestral rehearsals in Milan led by such conductors as Arturo Toscanini and Wilhelm Furtwängler. He later recalled how he hated seeing Toscanini in rehearsal.[6]

Other conductors who influenced him were Bruno Walter, Josef Krips and Herbert von Karajan.[7] It was not until hearing Antonio Guarnieri's conducting of Claude Debussy's Nocturnes that Abbado resolved to become a conductor himself.[3] At age 15, Abbado first met Leonard Bernstein when Bernstein was conducting a performance featuring Abbado's father as a soloist.[8] Bernstein commented, "You have the eye to be a conductor."[9]

Claudio Abbado in 1965

Abbado studied piano, composition, and conducting at the Milan Conservatory,[10] and graduated with a degree in piano in 1955.[2] The following year, he studied conducting with Hans Swarowsky at the Vienna Academy of Music,[11] on the recommendation of Zubin Mehta.[11] Abbado and Mehta both joined the Academy chorus to be able to watch such conductors as Bruno Walter and Herbert von Karajan in rehearsal.[2][5][6] He also spent time at the Chigiana Academy in Siena.[8]

In 1958, Abbado made his conducting debut in Trieste.[2] That summer, he won the international Serge Koussevitzky Competition for conductors[11] at the Tanglewood Music Festival,[2][12] which resulted in a number of operatic conducting engagements in Italy. In 1959, he conducted his first opera, The Love for Three Oranges, in Trieste. He made his La Scala conducting debut in 1960. In 1963, he won the Dimitri Mitropoulos Prize for conductors,[11] which allowed him to work for five months with the New York Philharmonic as an assistant conductor to Bernstein.[2] Abbado made his New York Philharmonic professional conducting debut on 7 April 1963. A 1965 appearance at the RIAS Festival in Berlin led to an invitation from Herbert von Karajan to the Salzburg Festival the following year to work with the Vienna Philharmonic. In 1965, Abbado made his British debut with the Hallé Orchestra, followed in 1966 by his London Symphony Orchestra (LSO) debut.[12][6]

Abbado taught chamber music for 3 years during the early 1960s in Parma.[13][14] His early advocacy of contemporary music included conducting the world premiere of Giacomo Manzoni's Atomtod, on 25 March 1965, in Milan.

In 1969, Abbado became principal conductor at La Scala. Subsequently, he became the company's music director in 1972. He took the title of joint artistic director, along with Giorgio Strehler and Carlo Maria Badini, in 1976.[3] During his tenure, he extended the opera season to four months, and focused on giving inexpensive performances for the working class and students. In addition to the standard opera repertoire, he presented contemporary operas, including works of Luigi Dallapiccola and of Luigi Nono, in particular the world premiere of Nono's Al gran sole carico d'amore. In 1976, he brought the La Scala company to the US for its American debut in Washington, D.C. for the American Bicentennial.[15] In 1982, he founded the Filarmonica della Scala for the performance of orchestral repertoire by the house orchestra in concert. Abbado remained affiliated with La Scala until 1986.[1][16]

On 7 October 1968, Abbado made his debut with the Metropolitan Opera with Don Carlo. He began to work more extensively with the Vienna Philharmonic (VPO) after 1971,[17] which included two engagements as conductor of the orchestra's New Year's Day concert, in 1988 and 1991. He was a recipient of both the Philharmonic Ring and the Golden Nicolai Medal from the Vienna Philharmonic.[18]

He served as Principal Guest Conductor of the London Symphony Orchestra (LSO)[19] from 1975 to 1979 and became its Principal Conductor in 1979,[1][9] a post he held until 1987. (He was also the LSO's Music Director from 1984 until the end of his principal conductor tenure.)[20] From 1982 to 1985, he was principal guest conductor of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra (CSO). In 1986, Abbado became the Generalmusikdirector (GMD) of the city of Vienna, and in parallel, was music director of the Vienna State Opera from 1986 to 1991.[1][8] During his tenure as GMD in Vienna, in 1988, he founded the music festival Wien Modern. There he backed numerous contemporary composers including György Ligeti, Pierre Boulez, and Luigi Nono.[4]

Amongst a wide range of Romantic works which he recorded and performed, Abbado had a particular affinity with the music of Gustav Mahler, whose symphonies he recorded several times. Despite this, he never managed to complete a cycle with a single orchestra: in a mix of studio and concert releases, he recorded Symphonies 1–2 and 5–7 in Chicago, Symphonies 2–4, 9 and the Adagio from 10 in Vienna, Symphonies 1 and 3–9 in Berlin, and Symphonies 1–7 and 9 in Lucerne. A planned Eighth in Lucerne (the intended culmination of his traversal of the symphonies there) had to be cancelled owing to his ill health. The symphony was finally performed and recorded in 2016 under Riccardo Chailly as a tribute to Abbado.[33]

He was also noted for his interpretations of modern works by composers such as Arnold Schoenberg, Karlheinz Stockhausen, Giacomo Manzoni, Luigi Nono, Bruno Maderna, György Ligeti, Giovanni Sollima, Roberto Carnevale, Franco Donatoni and George Benjamin.

Abbado tended to speak very little in rehearsal, sometimes using the simple request to orchestras to "Listen".[6] This was a reflection of his own preference for communication as a conductor via physical gesture and the eyes, and his perception that orchestras did not like conductors who spoke a great deal in rehearsal.[18] Clive Gillinson characterised Abbado's style as follows:

"...he basically doesn't say anything in rehearsals, and speaks so quietly, because he's so shy, so people can get bored. But it works because everyone knows the performances are so great. I've never known anybody more compelling. He's the most natural conductor in the world. Some conductors need to verbally articulate what they want through words, but Claudio just shows it, just does it."[14]

In performance, Abbado often conducted from memory,[34] as he himself noted:

"...it is indispensable to know the score perfectly and be familiar with the life, the works and the entire era of the composer. I feel more secure without a score. Communication with the orchestra is easier." [18]

Claudio Abbado in 1982

• Koussevitzky Prize, 1958[6]
• Dimitri Mitropoulos Memorial International Competition, 1963 (Won the one-year position as assistant conductor to Leonard Bernstein at the New York Philharmonic.)[4]
• Knight Grand Cross of the Order of Merit of the Italian Republic, 12 July 1984[35]
• Mahler Medal, 1985[36]
• Grand cross of the Légion d'honneur, 1986[36]
• Knight Commander of the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany, 1992[1][36]
• City of Vienna, Ehrenring [Honor ring], 1994[1][36]
• Ernst von Siemens Music Prize, 1994[37]
• Medal for Meritorious for Culture and Art, 13 January 1997[1][38]
• Great Cross with Star and Sash, 2002[39]
• Praemium Imperiale, 2003[40]
• Royal Philharmonic Society Gold Medal, 2003[41]
• Wolff Prize in Arts, 2008[42]

Abbado received honorary doctorates from the universities of Ferrara (1990), Cambridge (1994), Aberdeen (1986)[1][43] and Havana.

On 30 August 2013, Giorgio Napolitano, the President of Italy, appointed Abbado to the Italian Senate as a Senator for life, in honour of his "outstanding cultural achievements". Abbado became a member of the Public Education and Cultural Heritage Commission of the Italian Senate on 25 September 2013.[44]

From his first marriage in 1956, to singer Giovanna Cavazzoni, Abbado had two children, Daniele Abbado (born 1958), who became an opera director, and Alessandra (born 1959). His first marriage ended in divorce.[11][48] From his second marriage, to Gabriella Cantalupi, Abbado had a son, Sebastiano. His four-year relationship with Viktoria Mullova resulted in Mullova's first child, a son,[11][49] the jazz bassist, Misha Mullov-Abbado.[50] Abbado's nephew, the son of his brother, Marcello, is the conductor Roberto Abbado.

Abbado died from stomach cancer in Bologna on 20 January 2014 at the age of 80. One week later, in tribute to him, the orchestra "Filarmonica della Scala", conducted by Daniel Barenboim, performed the slow movement of Beethoven's Symphony No. 3 (Marcia funebre: Adagio assai in C minor) to an empty theater, with the performance relayed to a crowd in the square in front of the opera house and live-streamed via La Scala's website.[51] He is buried in Val Fex in Switzerland.

• New Year's Eve Concert 1992: Richard Strauss Gala, with Martha Argerich, Kathleen Battle, Renée Fleming, Andreas Schmidt, Frederica von Stade and the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra, Kultur Video

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Claudio Abbado.

• Claudio Abbado at AllMusic
• Claudio Abbado at Deutsche Grammophon
• Claudio Abbado at Sony BMG Masterworks
• Claudio Abbado discography
• Claudio Abbado at IMDb
• Works by or about Claudio Abbado in libraries (WorldCat catalog)
• Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra, 'Maestro With Cult Status', page on Claudio Abbado
• Gramophone artist page on Claudio Abbado
• Presidenza della Repubblica, Italian-language page on Claudio Abbado and state honours from Italy
• Elisabetta Povoledo, "Thousands Pay Tribute to Abbado in Front of La Scala". New York Times, "ArtsBeat" blog, 27 January 2014
• London Symphony Orchestra tribute page to Claudio Abbado
• Interview with Claudio Abbado, 3 February 1985