Twelve years ago, on 20 January 2014, Claudio Abbado left this world, leaving us bereft of his music.
‘One being is missing, and all is depopulated,’ said Lamartine, and I can only note that music remains depopulated, twelve years later. Not that there aren't other great conductors who still give us exceptional moments, who still reveal new aspects of musical interpretation, but Claudio was one of those irreplaceable, unique individuals who continue to haunt our memories and bring tears to our eyes when we think of the moments we shared with his music, and sometimes with him.
When writing an article or revisiting a place emblematic of his work, there is not a day that goes by without his memory coming to mind, not a day without a fleeting thought for Claudio : it is Lucerne, it is of course the Berlin Philharmonic, where I spent two memorable evenings last week, listening twice to Mahler's Symphony No. 8, the one he did not like and refused to conduct in Lucerne in 2012 at the last minute.
Every time I hear Mahler's Eighth, I think of him, just as I think of him at every concert at the Philharmonie, at every Berliner concert, seeing, for example, during these two concerts, the musicians who already belonged to the orchestra, Albrecht Mayer, Daniele Damiano, Wenzel Fuchs, Marie-Pierre Langlamet, Dominik Wollenweber and Ludwig Quandt, the cellist who opened the last two evenings by asking the audience to donate money to support refugees, and who was one of the pallbearers at his funeral in Bologna.
And as I listened to this giant symphony with hundreds of participants, I thought about how he knew how to spatialise music, placing musicians in the furthest corners of the Philharmonic Hall…
My mind was racing, because it had been completely shaped by the music of Claudio Abbado, heard for the first time in concert in 1976 with the Vienna Philharmonic, and for the last time in Lucerne in August 2013. I heard some of his last productions at La Scala, Boris Godunov, Lohengrin, Carmen, Pelléas et Mélisande, and a few revivals of Rossini, Verdi (Barbiere di Siviglia and Macbeth in particular, but also Il Viaggio a Reims from Pesaro) and Nono (Prometeo from Venice). But it was after he left Milan that I began to follow not only his opera productions but also his concerts on a regular basis.
And these were my universities, because through him I really learned to listen to the orchestra, to understand the architecture of the scores, by listening to a concert several times, or to a work he conducted with different orchestras.
Through him, I also met many friends who are still very close to me today : he is also at the origin of that world.
That is why he is the luck of my life, my eternal gift.
He is the backbone of my passion for music, for opera, and for a sensitive yet deeply intellectual approach to art, without ever being ‘elitist’ in the sense that his concerts were moments of openness and sharing, including his very special concerts with young people, the GMJO (Gustav Mahler Jugendorchester) and the Simón Bolivar.
Leaving the Philharmonie last Saturday, I went to dinner with a friend at his favourite Italian trattoria in Berlin, as I often do, as a way of keeping him with me, or with us, in the places where he thrilled us and also in the more unexpected places he introduced us to.
It is not a consolation, but a fact : Claudio has not left us, he is still here, in me, in us, who followed him and who are still here. The French president François Mitterrand confided at the end of his life, ‘I believe in the power of the spirit.’
We must undoubtedly believe in it.
