Claudio Abbado - Brahms/Schoenberg/Beethoven - Harmonia Mundi

"Aufnahme"
Recorded live at the Concert Hall of KKL Luzern, 16/17 August 2013

"Werke"
Johannes Brahms - Tragic Overture, Op. 81
Arnold Schoenberg - Orchestral Interlude and "Song of the Wood Dove" from Gurre-Lieder
Ludwig van Beethoven - Symphony No. 3 in E flat major, Op. 55 (Eroica)

With his very own "mysterious seductive power and legendary elegance" (Le Monde), Claudio Abbado opened for the last time the "Lucerne Festival" in the summer of 2013. Only a few months later, the world hat to bid farewell to a monumental artist, humanist, great conductor and orchstra founder. Even in the concert itself, documented here, lived a moment of farewell, as the three great works performed tell of the transience of life. The centerpiece of the "Eroica" is the funeral march revealing "abysses of shattering dimension" - an "intense experience" (Neue Zürcher Zeitung). This record, the last audio-visual documentation of his work, captures once again the extraordinary atmosphere of "vibrant emotionality" that always emerged when Abbado created music with his "orchestra of friends".