Cluadio Abbado & Wiener Philharmoniker - Complete Recordings on DG (58CD)
PRE-ORDER
- Claudio Abbado’s complete recordings with the Wiener Philharmoniker on Deutsche Grammophon
- 58-CD limited edition
- Includes celebrated collaborations with with Maurizio Pollini, Nathan Milstein, Friedrich Gulda, Cecilia Bartoli, Frederica von Stade, Bo Skovhus, Gundula Janowitz, Siegfried Jerusalem, Anne Sofie von Otter, Maria João Pires…
- 116pp booklet (E/D/I) includes new notes from Silvia Kargl, of the Historical Archives of the Wiener Philharmoniker, and Friedemann Pestel , of the Department of History at Albert-Ludwigs-Universität Freiburg, prefaced by an introduction from Prof. Dr. Clemens Hellsberg, Chairman of the Wiener Philharmoniker 1997–2017 and violinist with the orchestra 1976–2016
CLAUDIO ABBADO & THE WIENER PHILHARMONIKER
Abbado’s long and venerable association with the Wiener Philharmoniker began when he first conducted the orchestra at Karajan’s invitation at the 1965 Salzburg Festival – and how! “We gave a concert with Claudio Abbado and found in him a future hope,” recalls violinist Otto Strasser, the orchestra’s long-time Chairman. Not lacking in self-confidence, Abbado chose Mahler’s Second Symphony for his Salzburg debut proving himself worthy of taking his place in the great tradition of the orchestra’s leading Mahler conductors – namely, Bruno Walter, Mitropoulos and Kubelík. The orchestra was so impressed by what the young music director from La Scala achieved that they invited him back to conduct Beethoven and later Brahms. It was not long before Abbado became one of the orchestra’s foremost Beethoven interpreters.
While Abbado had a special affinity for Mozart and while Bruckner’s symphonies occupy a special place in his career, Abbado extended the direction of the orchestra’s core repertory in the direction of the 20 th Century – indeed no other conductor who has worked with the Wiener Philharmoniker has engaged with the music of the Second Viennese School as intensively as Abbado.
As an opera conductor, Abbado made his Wiener Philharmoniker debut at the 1968 Salzburg Festival with Rossini’s Il barbiere di Siviglia. Many of the productions that Abbado conducted during his tenure as Director of the Wiener Staatsoper have gone down in the annals of opera – among them, the present recordings of Debussy’s Pelléas et Mélisande, Mozart’s Le nozze di Figaro, Rossini’sL’italiana in Algeri, Wagner’s Lohengrin. And finally, no survey of Abbado’s work with the Wiener Philharmoniker can fail to include his two New Year Concerts in 1988 and 1991. Here – casting a sideways glance at the world of opera – Abbado supplemented the traditional works by members of the Strauß dynasty and by their immediate contemporaries with pieces by Emil Nikolaus von Reznicek as well as by Mozart and Schubert.
