Gatti, Meier, Pape & Mahler Chamber Orchestra: Memorial Concert for Claudio Abbado

About the Event

The Dresden Music Festival is dedicating the concert at the Frauenkirche on June 9, originally planned with Claudio Abbado and his orchestra Mozart Bologna, to the late conductor, who died in January. The Mahler Chamber Orchestra will be joined by soloists Waltraud Meier and René Pape under the baton of Daniele Gatti.

The musicians of the Mahler Chamber Orchestra were close associates of Abbado and carry on the spirit of listening, friendliness and respect that he embodied. The famous Italian conductor Daniele Gatti – who, like Abbado, hails from Milan – will conduct the orchestra, with which he has regularly collaborated. The soloists for the evening concert at the Frauenkirche will be René Pape and Waltraud Meier, two singers of outstanding caliber.

The program includes selected songs by Gustav Mahler. Claudio Abbado was considered a profound authority on Gustav Mahler and one who set new standards as an interpreter of his works, as well as those of Richard Wagner. An excerpt from Wagner's 'Tristan und Isolde' will lead to Robert Schumann, who himself thought about a Tristan opera – thus inspiring Wagner to write his. The memorial concert concludes with Schumann's Symphony No. 3, the »Rhenish«. This a work with which Claudio Abbado felt a special affinity – according to his own wish, it was to have been the last piece that he wanted to record in the studio. The »Rhenish« represents optimism and new hope in Schumann's oeuvre.

Mahler Chamber Orchestra
Daniele Gatti [Conductor]
Waltraud Meier [Mezzosoprano]
René Pape [Bass]