Interview
Zubin Mehta in conversation with Martin Stegner Zubin Mehta and Rudolf Buchbinder with Beethoven and Strauss
This concert, under the baton of Zubin Mehta, was dedicated to the memory of Cladio Abbado who had died a few days before on 20 January 2014. A minute’s silence was followed by an addition to the programme, the Adagietto from Mahler’s Fifth Symphony. The evening continued with Beethoven’s Fifth Piano Concerto with Rudolph Buchbinder as the soloist, and other works by Webern and Strauss.
Conductor Zubin Mehta was a close friend of Claudio Abbado for over 50 years. With the Adagietto from Gustav Mahler’s Fifth Symphony, the Berliner Philharmoniker pay special tribute to Abbado as a great Mahler interpreter who conducted the orchestra in many unforgettable performances of Mahler’s symphonies.
Claudio Abbado also had a deep understanding of works of the Second Viennese School. The delicate fragility of Anton Webern’s Six Pieces for Orchestra, which Abbado conducted several times during his Berlin years, particularly reflected his ideal of a transparent sound. The Six Pieces were inspired by the death of Webern’s mother; the fourth piece is a stylised funeral march.
In Beethoven’s Fifth Piano Concerto – with Rudolf Buchbinder as the soloist – the mood becomes triumphantly heroic, continuing in this spirit during Richard Strauss’s Ein Heldenleben. Although Abbado’s interpretations were also characterised by emphatic intensity, even in moments of musical self-certainty they never lost their sense of compassion.
Berliner Philharmoniker
Zubin Mehta
Rudolf Buchbinder
© 2014 Berlin Phil Media GmbH
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