It's the title of a 1996 Abbado documentary by Paul Smaczny that captured the deep artistry of the Milanese maestro with the Berliner Philharmoniker among interviews with colleagues and lifelong friends such as Barenboim, Boulez and Mehta.
And you can see it for yourselves in this YouTube clip above of the forty seconds of magic that followed a summer 2012 Mozart Requiem Mass in Lucerne after the final Lux Aeterna. Wait for it (or the impatient can skip to minute 5:25). You can find the whole work here.
La Repubblica reports from last night's concert at Bologna's Teatro Manzoni, where Dutch master Bernard Haitink stepped in for an ailing Claudio Abbado. The concert -- Beethoven's Pastorale with Abbado's very own Orchestra Mozart (founded by Abbado in 2004) and Pollini's Imperatore -- exited to a solid review, but we wouldn't expect any less from a Pollini/Haitink monolith.
Although Haitink's Beethoven was 'austerely conducted with purity' and 'without bucolic rhetoric', the concert was dampened by Abbado's absence following cancellations of key fall dates. 'La salute del maestro preoccupa,' said La Repubblica, 'the maestro's health is troubling', the evening a stark departure from Abbado's last appearance in Bologna over the summer in a jubilant concert for the Italian president Giorgio Napolitano.
[UPDATE: DECEMBER 4]: Abbado's donated his honorary Senator for Life award to the School of Music in Fiesole, which will go to fund scholarships in a bid to recruit new talent of future generatons. He was awarded the title earlier this year by the President of the Italian Republic for his significant contributions to classical music.