Remembering Claudio Abbado

Who is Claudio Abbado?

According to a survey carried out by the Classic Voice magazine in 2011 Claudio Abbado is the sixth most popular orchestra conductor of our time.

It would be too long to list all the major appointments and awards he received during his career from the most important and prestigious world musical institutions.

Tireless founder of seven orchestras (European Youth Orchestra, Chamber Orchestra of Europe, La Scala Philharmonic, Gustav Mahler Youth Orchestra, Mahler Chamber Orchestra, Lucerne Festival Orchestra, Mozart Orchestra), he was also the organizer of youth orchestra projects that launched international orchestras and conductors such as Harding and Dudamel.

A relentless disseminator of beauty, engaged in a constant search for “the truth” in music, a supporter of culture democracy, of beauty accessible to everyone.

Abbado the “gardener”

Yet Abbado was a humble and even shy man who liked to refer to himself as a “gardener” for his passion for nature and plants. He was particularly proud of the garden surrounding his house in Alghero he filled with typical Mediterranean plants.

Famous his request, in agreement with his friend Renzo Piano, for an extraordinary cachet of 90.000 trees to be planted in Milan, as a payment for his return at La Scala after 24 years, in 2009.

A “payment in kind”, as he called it, meant to create a green belt sufficient to compensate the carbon emissions of 5000-6000 cars. But the payment was never honoured… and Milan is struggling as never before with unprecedented levels of fine particles.

The long lasting legacy of an extraordinary artist and man

We would like to remember Claudio Abbado in the second anniversary of his death in Bologna with this moving, intense and even intimate video of the last moments of Mozart’s requiem conducted in Lucerna in 2012: a small tribute to the long lasting legacy of an extraordinary artist and man.