By Sebastian Spreng, Visual Artist and Classical Music Writer

He preferred to be called “Claudio” rather than “maestro”, a title that defined him, even though it was unnecessary, as were those of Knight of the Republic and Senator for Life that the Italian government bestowed on him. He was always above all titles, in politics as in music, which has now lost one of its pillars. He was a model of man made conductor, a citizen of the world, a bearer of an abstract art that came alive in his hands. Claudio Abbado

Twelve years ago he cheated death. Music itself seemed to have intervened. It needed him a while longer, and we thought death would not  disturb him again. He had – literally – returned to life, fragile, gaunt, a true phoenix, irrefutable proof that “music can work miracles,” as his good friend Bruno Ganz said in Paul Smaczny’s documentary Listening to Silence. The fact is that Abbado is impossible to encompass, much less in an obituary that by nature must be brief, barely a memorial card of a sad date for music and for humanity – January 20, 2014 – of news that for many of us is nearly unbearable.

Also difficult to encompass is the musical, intellectual and social spectrum Abbado covered. At the age of 7, dazzled by Debussy’s Three Nocturnes at La Scala, the Milan native found his path in life, a path that led him to excellence in an eclectic repertoire, unusual for Italians, with the exception of predecessor Toscanini, teacher Carlo Maria Giulini and “rival” Riccardo Muti.

From Mozart, Beethoven, Brahms, Prokofiev, Mendelssohn, Ravel, Bruckner, Bartók, Wagner, Bach, the Vienna school, Mussorsky, Verdi – especially Macbeth, Simon Boccanegra and Don Carlo – to bel canto and an exquisite  Rossini (now somewhat forgotten in comparison to a Mahler an immense as it was paradigmatic); from his legendary collaborations with Berio, Nono, Strehler, Ponnelle, Ronconi, Pollini, Argerich, Serkin, Gutman, Sukowa and a legion of instrumentalists and singers that included Domingo, Freni, Berganza, Prey, Capuccilli, Verrett, Scotto, Pavarotti, Von Stade, Von Otter, Raimondi, Caballé, Valentini-Terrani, Carreras, Bruson, Furlanetto, Ghiaurov… the list is interminable.

With none of the ballyhoo or pretentiousness associated with his profession, in addition to leading the London Symphony, plus those of Chicago and New York, he had the supreme pleasure of reigning at La Scala for two decades, and then in Vienna and with the Berlin Phlharmonic, chosen by the orchestra itself to succeed Karajan. Abbado, a musician’s musician, represented a new era, the new Europe that followed the fall of the Berlin Wall at the dawn of the century.

Then cancer dealt a blow that seemed fatal, but Claudio and his ally, the music, won. His return revived and defined his legacy, a legacy he started building with the Mahler Youth Orchestra and the European Orchestra and enriched with the Lucerne Festival, his most glorious, transcendental achievement of the last decade, the Gesualdo Festival and the Mozart Youth Orchestra, final creation of the adolescent who would sneak into the rehearsals of his idols, Toscanini, Bruno Walter, Szell and, especially, Wilhelm Furtwäengler (“who talked the least and from whom I learned the most”), of the maestro who perfected his art with Swarowsky, Votto and Gulda in Vienna, of the heir of a family tradition of illustrious artists and intellectuals who took on fresh vigor with the enthusiasm and hope he placed on José Antonio Abreu’s “El Sistema” (a network of schools, orchestras and choirs for low-income children), whose worldwide champion he became. I phoned his friend and colleague James Judd, who was his assistant with the European Community Youth Orchestra, the Chamber Orchestra of Europe and now is the Artistic Director of the Miami Music Project inspired in “El Sistema”. “He never wanted to be called ‘Maestro’ – says Judd -believed music to be a human necessity; that it must be available to all. He loved working with young musicians as well as the finest professionals and leaves behind an inspired global musical family deeply saddened by his death.”

A musical titan, a great man, a symbol of the post-war hope of a better world has gone, or, rather, has left us. Shy, accessible, elusive, honest, congenial, quiet, generous, lovable… a friend of humanity, art explorer, tireless experimenter, exquisite and sensitive man of peace, exemplary survivor who in his love of nature – before conducting again in Milan he set the condition that the city plant thousands of trees – and devotion to his vegetable gardens in Sardinia and Bologna seemed to embody what Beethoven considered the only symbol of human superiority: goodness.

“People are afraid of silence,” he used to say, and at the end of his concerts he would impose a respectful, tacit, immaculate silence, a brief hiatus and yet interminable period of reflection between the last note and the uncontainable applause that awaited, such as the half-hour ovation, crowned by a shower of 4,000 roses, that followed his performance with the Berlin Philharmonic in Vienna. On his departure, that silence he made us respect and taught us to listen to, that silence that – curiously – is all of music, must prevail. A week after his departure, on Mozart’s birthday Daniel Barenboim conducted the funeral march from Beethoven’s Eroica Symphony in an empty Teatro alla Scala while thousands of people payed tribute listening outside. Good-bye, Claudio, good-bye – and this time I won’t hold back – MAESTRO.

• Claudio Abbado, June 26, 1933, Milan – Jan. 20, 2014, Bologna 

SELECTED ABBADO IN CD AND DVD

• MAHLER – Ninth Symphony – Lucerne DVD
• PROKOFIEV – RAVEL – Piano Concertos – Argerich, BPO – DG
• VERDI – Simon Boccanegra – Cappuccilli, Freni, Ghiaurov, Domingo – DG
• BERG –Lulu Suite, Altenberg Lieder – Margaret Price, LSO – DG
• VERDI – Macbeth – Capuccilli, Verrett, Domingo – DG
• BARTOK – Piano Concertos 1 & 2 – Pollini, Chicago S.O. – DG
• ROSSINI – La Cenerentola  – von Stade -Araiza-Montarsolo – Ponnelle, DVD
• MAHLER – Symphonies 1, 2, 3, 5, 6, 7 – Lucerne – DVD
• CHOPIN, LISZT – Piano Concertos – Argerich, LSO
• DEBUSSY – Pelleas et Melisande – Ewing-LeRoux-van Dam – DG
• BIZET – Carmen – Berganza-Domingo-Cotrubas – DG
• NONO – Il canto sospeso –  Booney, Lothar, Ganz – BPO – Sony
• MENDELSSOHN, SCHUBERT, TCHAICOVSKY – Symphonies – LSO, BPO