Abbado Claudio, *26 June 1933 Milan, †20 January 2014 Bologna, son of Michelangelo, Italian conductor and pianist. He studied music at the conservatory in Milan under the supervision of E. Calac (piano), A. Votta (conducting) and G.C. Paribeni and B. Bettinelli (composition). In 1957, he completed additional studies (conducting with H. Swarowsky) at the music academy in Vienna. In 1958 he received the S. Koussevitzky Award in Tanglewood (USA), and in 1963 in New York the D. Mitropoulos Award; he won numerous record awards, including Grand Prix du Disque (1967). From 1969 he collaborated with La Scala and conducted leading orchestras in Europe and the USA. In 1971–86 he was the director of La Scala, in the years 1979–88 he headed the London Symphony Orchestra, in 1989 he succeeded H. von Karajan as the director of the Berliner Philharmoniker, simultaneously serving as director of the Staatsoper (1986–91) and chief conductor of the Philharmonic in Vienna. He also distinguished himself as an animator of musical life. He is the creator of the Wien Modern festival (1988) and the international composition competition in Vienna (1991). From 1992, he organised (with N. Gutman) Berliner Begegnungen, an annual meeting of masters and adepts of chamber music, which precedes the Berliner Festwochen festival; from 1994 he was the director of the Osterfestspiele in Salzburg. Abbado established international youth orchestras that are already well known today – the European Community Youth Orchestra (1978), the Gustav Mahler Youth Orchestra (1988) and the Chamber Orchestra of Europe (1981), with which in 1988 he recorded for DG, among others, Mozart’s Don Giovanni. Among the opera productions at La Scala and the Staatsoper in Vienna, subsequently recorded for the DG company, the most outstanding are Aida, Un ballo in maschera, Don Carlos, Macbeth and Simon Boccanegra by Verdi and Wozzeck by A. Berg. In Abbado’s concert repertoire – alongside works by Mozart, Beethoven, Schumann, Brahms, Dvořák, Tchaikovsky, Bruckner, Mahler, Janáček, Hindemith, Prokofiev – there are many contemporary works (he is valued mainly as an interpreter of contemporary music), some performed for the first time, including Atomtod by G. Manzoni (1965), Al gran sole carico d’amore by L. Nono (1975), Départ by W. Rihm (1988), Samuel Beckett: What is the Word by G. Kurtág (version for vocal-instrumental ensemble, 1991).
