Abbado Verdi Berlin

..only a select few get through to the subtext. Abbado is one.

There is tough competition for the best recording of 'Macbeth', but for me the combination of Abbado's explosive and rhythmically taut way with the score and Shirley Verrett's tour de force as Lady Macbeth give this one the edge.
- Amazon By Julian Grant -

Sony Classical releases a comprehensive homage to Abbado, acknowledged as one of the greatest of all conductors, by releasing a 39 CD boxset comprising his complete recordings for both RCA and CBS/Sony with the Berlin Philharmonic, the Chicago Symphony Orchestra as well as with the London Symphony Orchestra and featuring such stellar soloists as Murray Perahia, Martha Argerich, Midori, Cecile Licad and Lazar Berman.

New Year’s Eve Concert 1996 – Dances and Gypsy Tunes The fascinating Russian virtuoso violinist, Maxim Vengerov (winner of the Echo Klassik) lends radiance to the gala performance under the baton of Claudio Abbado. Johannes Brahms’Hungarian Dances and Gipsy Songs; Maurice Ravel’s Tzigane and La Valse and Hector Berlioz’s Hungarian March make this New Year’s Eve with the Berliner Philharmoniker unforgettable. New Year’s Eve Concert 1997 – A Tribute to Carmen The program of the Berlin Philharmonic bore the title «Dances of Life, Love, and Death», and it was hardly coincidental that it was meant as an homage to Carmen. The recording of the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra’s traditional New Year’s Eve Concert, conducted by Claudio Abbado, offers not only a cross section of worldfamous melodies from George Bizet’s opera, but also famous dance music that was intensely or subtly influenced by it.

Claudio Abbado enjoyed an international career almost without parallel, and occupied a position of unique standing in the musical world.
Admired and loved by the artists with whom he collaborated, he astonished and delighted audiences with the vivacity and poise of music-making and through his career as a conductor he took in a remarkable range of composers’ works.

The town of Palermo was illuminated and Claudio Abbado revealed his strong Sicilian roots. Viewers of this concert, broadcasted on TV all across Europe, were inspired to see the maestro so relaxed, gesticulating so emphatically.

“Domingo easily outshines his earlier recording with Giulini…while Katia Ricciarelli as the Queen gives a tenderly moving performance, if not quite commanding enough in the Act V aria. Ruggero Raimondi is a finely focused Philip, nicely contrasted with Nicolai Ghiaurov as the Grand Inquisitor” Penguin Guide

Known for having elevated the symphony and the opera to popular levels in his lamentably short life, Mozart was also substantially involved in sacred music. Among many smaller works for solo chorus and for combined choral/orchestral forces, he composed an enormous seventeen settings of the Latin Mass, of which this is his last. But this C Minor mass, which is said he composed in 1782 and 1783, was never really completed in a way Mozart found satisfactory, and thus it has been up to others to put this work into coherent form. The recording here is based on the reconstruction done by Salzburg composer and musicologist Helmut Eder; he worked on the "Et Incanatus Est" section of the Credo, as well as the concluding Sanctus and Benedictus sections. The work is still Mozart's, and is scored for a fairly substantial orchestra: one flute; pairs of oboes, bassoons, horns, and trumpets; three trombones; timpani; organ; and the full string compliment, plus four soloists and chorus.