Celebrating Claudio Abbado’s 80th birthday today, we made a video for an interview with the conductor that we did for our book Gustav Mahler: The conductors’ Interviews.

The conductor talks about the first time he heard Mahler’s music, his experiences with Bruno Walter, Zubin Mehta and Herbert von Karajan, and the death of Mahler’s brother, the “first stroke of fate” in the composer’s life.

The Interview is in German with English subtitles.