Universal Edition mourns the death of Claudio Abbado, a conductor who made a great contribution to the acceptance of the Second Viennese School, most significantly in Vienna itself. As a founder of Vienna’s Wien Modern festival in 1988, he created an independent forum for the music of the 20th century.

Beyond his focus on the music of Schönberg, Berg and Webern – whose music was central to the first festival – and Mahler (Vienna’s influence on his own understanding of Mahler is reflected in our interview, see below), Abbado also showed great interest in his own contemporaries. The Lucerne Concert Hall was inaugurated in 1998 with a concert by Abbado and the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra with a performance of Wolfgang Rihm’s IN-SCHRIFT.

Abbado’s championship of modern music will remain an example to us.