Lucerne Festival Historic Performances: Claudio Abbado Wiener Philharmoniker & Carlo Maria Giulini

• 1 I. Allegro moderato 12:22
• 2 II. Andante con moto 12:23
• 3 I. Adagio molto - Allegro con brio 12:27
• 4 II. Larghetto 11:15
• 5 III. Scherzo. Allegro - Trio 03:35
• 6 IV. Allegro molto 06:27
• 7 Siegfried-Idyll, WWV 103 19:11
• Total Runtime 01:17:40

Info for Lucerne Festival Historic Performances: Claudio Abbado

In memory of Claudio Abbado, who died on 20 January 2014 and who was closely associated with LUCERNE FESTIVAL for nearly five decades, audite and LUCERNE FESTIVAL are issuing three previously unreleased live recordings, approved by the conductor himself: on 5 September 1978, Claudio Abbado and the Vienna Philhar­monic performed Franz Schubert's Unfinished in Lucerne - a moving interpretation, emphasising the lyrical character of the work and creating a single arc of suspense from the sombre opening to the concluding transfiguration of the second movement. This work closes a circle insofar as Claudio Abbado also conducted Schubert's Unfinished at his final concert, given on 26 August 2013 in Lucerne.

On 25 August 1988, on the occasion of the festival's fiftieth anniversary, Abbado and the Chamber Orchestra of Europe performed exactly the same programme with which Arturo Toscanini had opened the Luzerner Festspiele in 1938, including Ludwig van Beethoven's Second Symphony and Richard Wagner's Siegfried Idyll, the latter written in Lucerne. The Neue Zürcher Zeitung commented enthusiastically that 'the sonic subtleties of the Siegfried Idyll were masterfully executed and carried through to a poignant ending with consistency in form and content. And in Abbado's interpretation of Beethoven's Second Symphony the structural clarity of the individual movements was combined with an unabated, almost newly inspired joy of performing amongst the orchestra'.

All three live recordings are released here for the first time. A particularly attractive aspect of this compilation is the fact that Abbado made studio recordings of the Beethoven and Schubert symphonies with the 'opposite' orchestras - i.e. Schubert's Unfinished with the Chamber Orchestra of Europe (1987) and Beethoven's Second Symphony with the Vienna Philharmonic (1988) - allowing revealing insights. The extensive booklet in three languages contains a portrait of Claudio Abbado by Peter Hagmann, tracing the conductor's long-standing activities in Lucerne; also included are previously unpublished photos from the archives of LUCERNE FESTIVAL.

Claudio Abbado stamped his mark on LUCERNE FESTIVAL as no other conductor. The artistic relationship between festival and conductor lasted for nearly half a century: Abbado made his début at Lucerne in the summer of 1966, performing Sibelius' Violin Concerto, Hindemith's Symphonic Metamorphoses and Mendelssohn's Italian Symphony together with the violinist Zino Francescatti and the Swiss Festival Orchestra. The Neue Zürcher Zeitung witnessed a 'delightfully unspoiled maestro with an uncorrupted musical spirit' and made the accurate prediction that 'this will not have been the last time that Claudio Abbado has conducted in Lucerne'. He was to return countless times, soon on an annual basis, appearing with the Philharmonia Orchestra and the Vienna Philharmonic, the ensembles of La Scala, Milan, the London Symphony Orchestra and the Berlin Philharmonic, and of course with the orchestras that Abbado himself had founded: the European Union Youth Orchestra, the Chamber Orchestra of Europe, the Gustav Mahler Youth Orchestra and the Mahler Chamber Orchestra. In 2003 Claudio Abbado and Michael Haefliger jointly founded the LUCERNE FESTIVAL ORCHESTRA, an orchestra unique in the world in uniting long-standing artistic colleagues of Abbado's - internationally renowned soloists, chamber musicians and music professors alongside the core performers from the Mahler Chamber Orchestra - into an ensemble in a league of its own. Standing on the podium in front of this 'Orchestra of Friends', as he himself called it, Claudio Abbado ended his artistic career on 26 August 2013 in Lucerne, having conducted Franz Schubert's Unfinished and Anton Bruckner's Ninth Symphony at his last concert.

Wiener Philharmoniker
Chamber Orchestra of Europe
Claudio Abbado, conductor

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Booklet for Lucerne Festival Historic Performances: Claudio Abbado