Claudio Abbado - some favourite recordings

The death of Claudio Abbado, announced on January 20, 2014, robbed classical music of one of its very finest living conductors – perhaps even the finest.

His recorded legacy, principally for Deutsche Grammophon, Decca and Sony, is far too large to do justice to in the course of a single article, but I wanted to pay some thanks to this wonderful conductor for leaving with us some very special music making indeed. The records chosen below are not necessarily his best loved, but they have stayed with me for a number of years now.

Haydn

Haydn was not necessarily one of Abbado's premier disciplines, but if my memory serves me right the first recording of his I ever heard was the Clock symphony, no.101, made with the Chamber Orchestra of Europe. This is a wonderful recording that enjoys Haydn's pithy humour in the second movement, the tick-tock of the clock beautifully done.

Another recording I remember well is the Symphony no.102 in B flat major, another of the London symphonies, which is brisk and purposeful in the Minuet, like throwing open the curtains on a bright spring morning. It is a shame DG didn’t manage to get all twelve of the London symphonies recorded in time, but the seven completed have some extremely enjoyable music making.

Schubert

Abbado's Schubert has exceptional clarity and, in the case of the Symphony no.9 – the Great – a deeply impressive symphonic breadth. The Symphony no.5 in B flat I found to be absolutely charming, but one of the jewels in Abbado's crown where Schubert is concerned is a rare recording of the complete music for the ballet Rosamunde, with a couple of crisply sung choruses – for shepherds, spirits and huntsmen alike – that go with some utterly charming ballet music numbers.

Mendelssohn

In his time at the helm of the London Symphony Orchestra from 1979 until 1987, one of Abbado's greatest achievements was a cycle of Mendelssohn symphonies and overtures. Players from the orchestra speak in hushed tones of the results they achieved together on those recordings, and listening to the evergreen accounts it is easy to hear why. The overtures have a particular sparkle, with Ruy Blas and The Hebrides particularly masterful offerings of light and shade.
Even better for me are Abbado's recordings of the Scottish and Reformation symphonies, both very good examples of 'Sturm und Drang' in Mendelssohn. The rustic second movement of the Scottish is an absolute delight, while the Reformation simmers a tension that is joyously released in the major key chorale at the end.

Brahms

Several commentators have – somewhat unkindly – poured scorn on Abbado's time with the Berlin Philharmoniker. Although it may not have yielded one benchmark recording after another, I have never found his recordings less than enjoyable. In the case of his Brahms, though, I return again and again to his direction.

I should stress this is not Brahms for the purist, necessarily, but I personally love the sheer refinement of these performances, the sleek approach to orchestral texture that makes the Berliners purr like a luxury German saloon car. There are rough edges when needed, but Abbado tends to take a long term structural view of the symphonies, presenting them in one long, unbroken phrase. In the introduction to the First this is consistently rewarding, but the lilting subjects of the Second benefit from this treatment just as well. The 'fillers' are excellent as well, the substantial choral pieces that are all too rarely heard, and a taut performance of the Tragic Overture that is especially strong.

Mahler

Abbado enjoyed a special relationship with Mahler's music that carried right through to his time with the Lucerne Festival, and some unforgettable live performances of the Second (Resurrection) and Third symphonies.

My abiding memory of his discs for Deutsche Grammophon is a live recording of the Symphony no.1, a relatively early outing on the label with the Berliner Philharmoniker, made in the Philharmonie in 1989. For me this piece in particular works best live, and the emerging dawn of the first movement is a wonderful experience, as is the high spirited outdoors music on offer elsewhere. As far as I can tell this was Abbado's first Mahler for DG, the start of an extremely auspicious discography for the composer.

Prokofiev

Abbado's earlier recordings find him enjoying more twentieth-century repertoire, and it is perhaps a regret that he did not spend more time with modern composers.

A couple of DG discs – of Kurtág, Stockhausen and Sciarrino among others – reveal what he could do in this field, but it is in the earlier giants of the twentieth-century that he really excelled in the 1960s and 1970s. This Prokofiev disc, made with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, is highly revered, for it contains a Scythian Suite of formidable power, a demonstrative Lieutenant Kijé and a very deep performance of the cantata Alexander Nevsky.

Even now I feel as though I have just touched the tip of the iceberg when it comes to looking at Claudio Abbado's recorded output, for there are many more gems – especially operatic – that I look forward to exploring further. For now, though, it is time to thank him for the music!

William Steinberg – The Disciplined Maestro Conductor

William Steinberg is one of the understated conductors of the 20th century,, known principally nowadays for an outstanding version of The Planets he recorded with the Boston Symphony Orchestra for Deutsche Grammophon in 1970. Of the non-English interpretations of the piece it stands as a remarkable achievement, and his understanding of the music and orchestration almost without parallel.

So it comes as a welcome change to be talking about the conductor's other achievements, with a substantial body of recorded work for EMI that has just been remastered and released in a box of 20 CDs, much of it made available for the first time. It explores Steinberg's relationship with another American orchestra, the Pittsburgh Symphony, begun in the early 1950s and maintained for nigh on 20 years.

The revealing booklet note, penned by Mark Kluge, reveals Steinberg as a relatively introverted soul, yet one who had the ultimate respect of his orchestra, as they regularly played their hearts out for him and formed a strong reputation of their own. Steinberg gained a reputation as someone who concentrated on the music alone, which sounds an obvious point to make, but where a lot of conductors of that time sought to impose their own personalities on the music, it is a value that Steinberg should communicate the music in a very human way.

As a result his Beethoven speaks very directly, and is helped on this set by recordings that are impressively clear despite their age of almost 60 years. The Eroica is lean and muscular, the Eighth is performed with a smile and the Violin Concerto and Emperor match their soloists Nathan Milstein and Rudolf Firkusny respectively. Milstein's sweet tone is an ideal complement to the orchestra’s earthy sound in concertos from Tchaikovsky, Dvorak and Glazunov, while the forthright Firkusny teams up for a magisterial account of Brahms' First Piano Concerto.

Two of Steinberg's favourite composers, the Richards Strauss and Wagner, are well represented, the former by sparkling renditions of Don Juan and Till Eulenspiegel, the latter in a disc of finely judged operatic excerpts. Earlier recordings of classical works also feature, with early 1950s Schubert, Haydn and Mozart performed in a 'big band' style that nevertheless allows plenty of room for grace. Mahler's daughter expressed her preference for Steinberg's account of the First Symphony over Bruno Walter – and here we get to find out why, with an exuberant reading full of lust for life, the composer's sense of the outdoors fully realised.

Steinberg, as is evident from his Planets recording, held great affinity with English music, and tucked away in this set are unusual recordings of Vaughan Williams' Five Tudor Portraits and the Tallis Fantasia, not to mention an account of Elgar's Enigma Variations. Another composer Steinberg went against the grain to champion was Paul Hindemith, and though his best recordings remain for DG the version of the Mathis der Maler symphony here is a treat. Bloch's punchy Concerto Grosso no.1 and Toch’s experimental Third Symphony are other standout points.

It is completely fitting, then, that a conductor respected by Arturo Toscanini, Wilhelm Furtwangler and Leonard Bernstein should finally get his own chance to shine, proper recognition at last for one of the 20th century's finest and most reverential conductors.

Recomposing Mahler

Deutsche Grammophon's occasional series 'Recomposing' invites recognised electronic producers to offer a fresh take on their chosen piece of classical music. Carl Craig and Jimi Tenor are previous targets in the series, but when the label asked Matthew Herbert to contribute, they may not have envisaged that he would go to such lengths to air his thoughts on the Adagio from Mahler's Tenth Symphony.

Herbert takes the recording made by Giuseppe Sinopoli and the Philharmonia as his starting point, and feeds it through his own studio technology. I listened to his reinterpretation for the first time late last night, conditions ideal for one of the finest nocturnal pieces of nocturnal music I have experienced.

Herbert bravely starts with the famous, all-encompassing chord from the symphony's climax, but floats it past the listener like a thick cloud, completely out of focus. There is then a sudden cut to a relatively scratchy viola playing the movement's main theme, recorded live at Mahler's graveside – a typical touch of Herbert reverence and invention (some would say eccentricity) rolled in to one. The movement then unfolds as you would expect, musically, but spatially we're on the move, tumbling forward through space, then suddenly stopping to take in an atmosphere, then zooming in on a micro theme.

With Herbert using the principal material early on it would seem there is nowhere to go, but these spatial variations are intriguing. They become disconcerting on headphones, like a piece of David Lynch film music, and several times I found myself looking round for noises that were not there. Herbert does, however, keep the serenity of the original. There is more than a hint of Damien Hirst, especially in the idea of recording some of the symphony being played in a coffin - but Herbert stops well short of the artist's sensationalist tactics, composing out of reverence for Mahler rather than a desire to shock. And yes, he is 'composing' in the true meaning of the word, taking the elements of the music that hint at an extra dimension - the harmonic advances, the silvery wisps of melody and the occasionally sudden gear change from slow to manic - before a restful return is made. Herbert gets all of that with modern recording techniques that move between the affectionate, the macabre and the downright strange.

The focus on spatial awareness means Herbert can pan out from the orchestra when he wants to, taking us underwater, out of body, out in to the open. It's a reimagining of the traditional 'sat down' concert experience, a response taken on the move. Sometimes the bass is really ramped up, with a sudden sense of anger in the fourth section, where the searing violins pierce a raft of warped distortion in the middle.
Perhaps inevitably the tension lags, and a passing hearse (recorded live, of course) offers relatively little, until the chord itself comes back in its proper place. Here the effect is massive, with everything to the max, especially the trumpet - and then the hammering drums and something like a massive windscreen wiper get to work, the only time Herbert employs his own percussion. The comedown is truly spooky and unsettling, before the music ends in weightlessness. And then, a door shuts – a simple and poignant moment.

So why go to this level of description? It is an attempt to show how much Herbert has put into his view of Mahler's final completed symphonic movement, a kind of a musical analysis of his reaction. It proves to be fascinating stuff, if a little macabre at times, but shows ultimately just how much electronic music and classical music rub shoulders. Composers of the former kind are much more plugged in than you might think.