Abbado with the Lucerne Festival Orchestra on DVD

“It would be easy to make a journalistic meal out of the way a drained Abbado holds his hand on his heart in the everlasting-seeming half minute's silence at the end of this Mahler Six. But there's not a hint of emotional excess about this awe-inspiring performance, draining only by virtue of its total concentration and bewildering armoury of tonal beauties. ...the range of shots is unerring and keeps the cowbells out of sight as something other-worldly in an already supernatural performance.” BBC Music Magazine, August 2007 *****

“Has there ever been a suaver, more transparent Mahler performance or one in which everything stays so beautifully in tune? ... Abbado’s music-making is a celebration of the purest joy.” Gramophone Magazine

“Has there ever been a suaver, more transparent Mahler performance or one in which everything stays so beautifully in tune? ... Abbado’s music-making is a celebration of the purest joy.” (The Gramophone Magazine)

“…intensive close-ups both of Abbado and his world-class musicians reinforce the sheer joy of the music-making. Mark Templeton's resonant tenor horn solo sets the tone for Mahler's night-march which Abbado seems to enjoy as much as the gaudy daylight ceremonial at the other end of the Symphony; and it's fascinating to watch him as the finale's carnival spins out of control: the wilder the music, the clearer the beat. ...filming is a model of its kind, lively and flexible...” BBC Music Magazine, July 2006 *****

“Neurotic angst, sneering sarcasm, bittersweet nostalgia - yet there's an equal proportion of joy in Mahler's music too, and that's what makes Abbado's 2005 recording so special. The visual element is especially valuable: the enraptured look that radiates from both the conductor but also the faces of the orchestral musicians is affecting in its own right.” Gramophone Magazine, April 2008

“An impressive and well-presented account from Abbado in a most persuasive reading” Penguin Guide, 2010 ***

“Alfred Brendel's way of dazzling an audience has less to do with speed, technique and finger power than with his ability to toy with his listeners' perceptions, usually by presenting contradictions and seeming to reconcile them at the same instant” New York Times

“Claudio Abbado's Mahler Fifth is magnificent.
It helps that the band is the Lucerne Festival Orchestra, that most exalted of all ad hoc ensembles, rather than the Gustav Mahler Jugendorchester.
It does make a difference in Lucerne to have a raft of seasoned players joining the core contingent from the Mahler Chamber Orchestra. The visual dimension is stronger, too, with the option to switch to the so-called 'Conductor Camera' and experience Abbado from a player's perspective. If this strikes some readers as a gimmick I can only say that I welcome it as a natural use of the new medium.
Listen without the images, though, and it quickly becomes apparent that Abbado's previous, audio-only account (DG, subsequently revamped for SACD) is sonically superior, with greater hall ambience and less tendency for wind, brass and percussion to lose themselves in the mix. It's not as if the conductor's conception has changed a great deal. His Fifth has always displayed a tad less inner intensity than some of the great readings of the past but with compensating elegance and grace. Once again the famous Adagietto steals in with a magic inevitability that few have matched. Those with limited budgets might do well to consider Leonard Bernstein's Unitel Mahler cycle (though it represents quite a substantial single outlay – see below). That said, Abbado's music-making is as fine as you will find anywhere today and his admirers should be well satisfied.” Gramophone Classical Music Guide, 2010

“For some the main attraction of Abbado in Lucerne will be the great Italian maestro conducting Debussy at the 2003 Lucerne Festival. For others it's the documentary, with its footage of some of the last century's greatest conductors in action: every brief glimpse adds flesh and bones to the names that adorn the labels of treasured discs by Ansermet, Fricsay, Kempe, Furtwängler and de Sabata. The film is confusingly structured, however, and though it confronts admirably Karajan's ruthless use of Lucerne to reinvent himself after his denazification, the commentary sounds like something written by the Swiss Tourist Board.
Barbirolli is filmed in Vancouver rehearsing the Haydn-attributed Oboe Concerto with his wife as soloist, who, as in her 1957 recording with the Hallé, plays her own cadenzas. All eyes are on JB (indeed, it's some time before we're aware that the soloist is at the rehearsal at all) but there is one lovely exchange when Rothwell suggests that they start again from the repeat of the second subject. 'Well, I don't know what the second subject is,' retorts her husband. 'That's for programme annotators.' George Szell, who died in the same year as Barbirolli (1970), was, by contrast, unpopular and despotic. The colour film profiles – but does not explore or question – his extraordinary 24-year relationship with the Cleveland Orchestra. With his lupine smile and fearsome presence, he tries to play the role of regular guy: rehearsal and performance sequences are riveting, with fascinating footage of him instructing three young conductors (James Levine one of them) on how to kickstart Don Juan and Beethoven's Fifth.
With the hooded eyes of a falcon and his sour mien, Szell's fellow Hungarian, Fritz Reiner looks as unpleasant as his reputation conducting the Chicago Symphony in 1953-4 at the start of his celebrated nine-year association with the orchestra. These black-and-white transmissions (sometimes more black than white) of one of the truly great conductors are of immense importance, and include one work (the Bach-Weiner) that Reiner did not record commercially. The DVD preserves Francis Coughlin's hopelessly unprepared in-vision linking commentary: every faultering sentence makes you thank God for the invention of the autocue.
The Stravinsky documentary features the famous (and equally toe-curling) encounter between the young Julian Bream and the elderly composer. Just as Stravinsky is about to start recording his Symphony of Psalms, Bream is introduced, sits down and plays a pavane on the lute … all the way through. As a conductor, Stravinsky is an uninspiring, baton-less time-beater, but the exchanges filmed simultaneously in the control room make for an unusually vivid sequence. Most revealing, though, is Stravinsky's conversation with his friend Nicholas Nabokov, filmed in Hamburg over a glass of whisky. Here, one of music's geniuses appears touchingly vulnerable and human. VAI may be a no-frills merchant but such treasure needs no fancy packaging. Its priceless contents speak for themselves.” Gramophone Classical Music Guide, 2010