3Vote!
Summer is Coming In (Free subscription) | 11/08/2009
Brahms' Symphony No. 1 is one of those rare pieces I can listen to over and over again, without ever getting bored. There's so much drama, anxiety and (eventually) affirmation in the piece that I would gladly travel abroad to hear different performances of it. So I did. Brahms' First is often mockingly called Beethoven's Tenth, so it was a fitting conclusion to Bonn's Beethovenfest last month. The...
6Vote!
New York Times (Free subscription) | 08/25/2009
The Italian conduction Claudio Abbado and the Lucerne Festival Orchestra delighted again this summer before they headed off to perform in Beijing.
3Vote!
I'll think of something later (Free subscription) | 08/17/2009
The idea, unannounced here because broadcasting your absence on the web is ill-advised, had been to give music a bit of a rest, to swim and walk as much as possible and to spend time with friends in Zurich (again) and Vienna (which we last visited two years ago). Well, we did all those things, but wherever you go in mittelEuropa, a great literary, artistic or musical personage has usually been before....
3Vote!
Entartete Musik (Free subscription) | 08/10/2009
This year's Wien Modern festival focuses on two of the 20th century's greatest creators and iconoclasts, with a retrospective of works by Iannis Xenakis (1922–2001) and Edgard Varèse (1883-1965). Founded by Claudio Abbado, featured in the blog post below, this festival has continued to pioneer new music and musical innovation almost single-handedly on a global level. Having moved on from...
2Vote!
Entartete Musik (Free subscription) | 08/10/2009
There is a great piece on Tom Service's blog about Claudio Abbado, his life in music and his life with Mahler. Click here to read the piece.
3Vote!
Intermezzo (Free subscription) | 08/08/2009
"Startlingly, there is no piano, or any other instrument, in his work room. "I don't need one," he says. Instead, Abbado hears all the music he conducts in his head. The central philosophy is of listening - the gift he...
Videos