DVD & Blu-ray Video Reviews
Claudio Abbado: Hearing the Silence — Sketches for a Portrait
An aurally and intellectually compelling video on the former director of the Berlin Philharmonic
Published on August 25, 2005
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Claudio Abbado: Hearing the Silence — Sketches for a Portrait (2004)
Bruno Ganz, speaker and narrator/Berlin Philharmonic/ Vienna Philharmonic/Lucerne Festival Orchestra/ Gustav Mahler Youth Orchestra/
Claudio Abbado cond.
Studio: EuroArts DVD (Distrib. Naxos)
Video: Enhanced for 16:9, Color and B&W
Audio: PCM Stereo, German and Italian (English subtitles)
Length: 67:00
Rating: ****
Winner of the Grand Premier Prix in Paris, 2004, this Paul Smaczny documentary has an other-wordly aura about it, an intentional, aesthetic distance in keeping with the elusive, personal and moral character of its subject, conductor Claudio Abbado, who resigned from his post as Conductor-for-Life with Berlin Philharmonic for health reasons related to a cancer operation. Opening both musically and poetically with Nono’s Prometeo and selected verses from the German mystic-romantic Hoelderlin, the film is a mostly-contemporary (there is historic, black-and-white footage and one 1971 interview) portrait of the conductor, as told by musical colleagues from various orchestras, and a detailed character-sketch from actor Bruno Ganz, who worked with Abbado in 1991 in Beethoven’s Egmont incidental music, and who remains a close and intimate friend.
The polar ends of the film have as their musical frame Dvorak’s New World Symphony in rehearsal and performance; and perhaps the figurative indication is that Abbado, Faust-like, never rests and is always seeking new dimensions and extensions of his musical spaces. There are precious few glimpses into the man away from musical contexts; only a mention of his room in the woods, where like Mahler, Abbado can retire after concert tours and refresh his spirit. We have two minutes of Abbado in his garden in Sardinia, verdant with greenery and overlooking some immaculate piece of the Bay of Naples. We have a moment where we intrude upon a post-concert kiss and mutual embrace between Ganz and Abbado, and Claudio tells Ganz he has gained back four pounds since his cancer operation, that music remains the ultimate medicine.
Some of the historical footage is worth recalling because it places Abbado, along with a young Zubin Mehta, in the Vienna Philharmonic Chorus, singing in the Mozart Requiem under Bruno Walter--it was the only way they could witness Walter’s rehearsal methods. Abbado mentions in passing Karajan, Krips, and Scherchen, all of whom he calls the greats of the period. We see the dark-haired Abbado rehearsing a section of the Stravinsky Symphony of Psalms, urging the players to come together, to listen more attentively to each other. Abbado insists on listening--horizontally as well as vertically--among the players; this quality the musicans Daniel Harding, Wolfram Christ, and Albrecht Mayer insist distinguishes Abbado’s approach from the more authoritarian character of the Berlin Philharmonic’s prior leaders. To see Abbado leading young musicians of the Gustav Mahler Youth Orchestra in the exalted sections from Bruckner’s Ninth Symphony--those yearning passages we collectors know so well from Furtwaengler’s 1944 performance--is inspiring and aesthetically/morally uplifting at once. The Eternal Child, so dear to Hoelderlin, is no less corporeal in Abbado; and Abbado’s youthful enthusiasm for music along with his personal repose, inspires his musicians across the board. The ultimate democrat in music, Abbado achieves for his players a feeling that they are free to shape the music for themselves, without however having yielded his own authority in any way.
The purely musical excerpts, from Dvorak, Bruckner, Beethoven, Mahler, Strauss, Brahms, Webern, Debussy, and Tchaikovsky, each support the marvelous ensemble Abbado achieves with each of the orchestras. We see Willi Boskovsky of the Vienna Philharmonic plying his trade for Abbado as fervently as he had for Furtwaengler. Abbado claims that his favorite audience is that which respects the silence before and after the music; and the tension Abbado maintains even after the last bars have faded from the Brahms Requiem and Debussy’s La Mer bear witness to command awe for music from his auditors. Like Hoelderlin’s poetry, the musical discussions and reminiscences embrace spirituality, nature, peace, death, and resignation to the cosmic order of things. Whether this all be imaginative speculation or high mysticism, Abbado believes it and his music-making proves that his vision speaks for many others as well. Visually as well as aurally and intellectually compelling, this video earns highest marks all around.
--Gary Lemco
Bruno Ganz, speaker and narrator/Berlin Philharmonic/ Vienna Philharmonic/Lucerne Festival Orchestra/ Gustav Mahler Youth Orchestra/
Claudio Abbado cond.
Studio: EuroArts DVD (Distrib. Naxos)
Video: Enhanced for 16:9, Color and B&W
Audio: PCM Stereo, German and Italian (English subtitles)
Length: 67:00
Rating: ****
Winner of the Grand Premier Prix in Paris, 2004, this Paul Smaczny documentary has an other-wordly aura about it, an intentional, aesthetic distance in keeping with the elusive, personal and moral character of its subject, conductor Claudio Abbado, who resigned from his post as Conductor-for-Life with Berlin Philharmonic for health reasons related to a cancer operation. Opening both musically and poetically with Nono’s Prometeo and selected verses from the German mystic-romantic Hoelderlin, the film is a mostly-contemporary (there is historic, black-and-white footage and one 1971 interview) portrait of the conductor, as told by musical colleagues from various orchestras, and a detailed character-sketch from actor Bruno Ganz, who worked with Abbado in 1991 in Beethoven’s Egmont incidental music, and who remains a close and intimate friend.
The polar ends of the film have as their musical frame Dvorak’s New World Symphony in rehearsal and performance; and perhaps the figurative indication is that Abbado, Faust-like, never rests and is always seeking new dimensions and extensions of his musical spaces. There are precious few glimpses into the man away from musical contexts; only a mention of his room in the woods, where like Mahler, Abbado can retire after concert tours and refresh his spirit. We have two minutes of Abbado in his garden in Sardinia, verdant with greenery and overlooking some immaculate piece of the Bay of Naples. We have a moment where we intrude upon a post-concert kiss and mutual embrace between Ganz and Abbado, and Claudio tells Ganz he has gained back four pounds since his cancer operation, that music remains the ultimate medicine.
Some of the historical footage is worth recalling because it places Abbado, along with a young Zubin Mehta, in the Vienna Philharmonic Chorus, singing in the Mozart Requiem under Bruno Walter--it was the only way they could witness Walter’s rehearsal methods. Abbado mentions in passing Karajan, Krips, and Scherchen, all of whom he calls the greats of the period. We see the dark-haired Abbado rehearsing a section of the Stravinsky Symphony of Psalms, urging the players to come together, to listen more attentively to each other. Abbado insists on listening--horizontally as well as vertically--among the players; this quality the musicans Daniel Harding, Wolfram Christ, and Albrecht Mayer insist distinguishes Abbado’s approach from the more authoritarian character of the Berlin Philharmonic’s prior leaders. To see Abbado leading young musicians of the Gustav Mahler Youth Orchestra in the exalted sections from Bruckner’s Ninth Symphony--those yearning passages we collectors know so well from Furtwaengler’s 1944 performance--is inspiring and aesthetically/morally uplifting at once. The Eternal Child, so dear to Hoelderlin, is no less corporeal in Abbado; and Abbado’s youthful enthusiasm for music along with his personal repose, inspires his musicians across the board. The ultimate democrat in music, Abbado achieves for his players a feeling that they are free to shape the music for themselves, without however having yielded his own authority in any way.
The purely musical excerpts, from Dvorak, Bruckner, Beethoven, Mahler, Strauss, Brahms, Webern, Debussy, and Tchaikovsky, each support the marvelous ensemble Abbado achieves with each of the orchestras. We see Willi Boskovsky of the Vienna Philharmonic plying his trade for Abbado as fervently as he had for Furtwaengler. Abbado claims that his favorite audience is that which respects the silence before and after the music; and the tension Abbado maintains even after the last bars have faded from the Brahms Requiem and Debussy’s La Mer bear witness to command awe for music from his auditors. Like Hoelderlin’s poetry, the musical discussions and reminiscences embrace spirituality, nature, peace, death, and resignation to the cosmic order of things. Whether this all be imaginative speculation or high mysticism, Abbado believes it and his music-making proves that his vision speaks for many others as well. Visually as well as aurally and intellectually compelling, this video earns highest marks all around.
--Gary Lemco
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