Claudio Abbado, the last recording: Brahms, Schoenberg, and Beethoven

And it is, as usual, an impeccable display of musicianship, a fittingly epic program beginning with Brahms’s Tragic Overture, the turbulent counterpart to the Academic Festival Overture—a pair about which the composer said “one laughs while the other weeps.” Marvelous mezzo-soprano Mihoko Fujimura then joins the maestro onstage for a vibrant rendition of “Tauben von Gurre!” (the Wood Dove’s Song) with its preceding orchestral interlude, taken from the early Schoenberg cantata Gurre-Lieder.

The concert closes with Beethoven’s sublime “Eroica” Symphony No. 3, whose second movement was conducted by Daniel Barenboim at Abbado’s funeral the following year. A deeply sensitive artist to his last, ever capable of bringing out the best in an ensemble, Abbado’s rendering of the final movement is particularly powerful: a bold, poignant counter to the lighter atmosphere of many other recordings and a worthy closing chapter, indeed, for one of the greatest interpreters in music history.