The evening began with a tremendous silence. It wasn’t the usual kind of silence either, the expectant hush that falls over the audience when the conductor raises his baton, but something entirely more profound. The audience and the orchestra had all risen to their feet for a moment of silence in memory of Claudio Abbado, who had passed away only five days earlier; within the near-perfect acoustics of the Philharmonie, there was not so much as a breath to be heard. Once we had taken our seats, maestro Zubin Mehta turned to the orchestra and the silence was replaced by the gentle pianissimo strings that begin the fourth movement of Mahler’s Fifth Symphony. The Adagietto – perhaps the most direct and beautiful utterance in any of Mahler’s symphonies – had been added to the evening’s programme specifically as a tribute to the late Claudio…
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