Music
The estate of conductor Claudio Abbado (1933-2014) was donated by the Fondazione Claudio Abbado to the Berlin State Library - Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation. The donation includes materials from Abbado's musical estate, such as scores, with accompanying handwritten notes, musicological and general literature from his library, as well as book publications about him, professional correspondence, and audio and video data carriers with recordings of his concert and opera performances. Alongside with the archive contract, an agreement was made with the Berlin Philharmonic Foundation for the curatorial care of the estate.
Claudio Abbado succeeded Herbert von Karajan as principal conductor of the Berlin Philharmonic from 1989 to 2002; at the same time, he was permanent guest conductor of the Vienna Philharmonic and principal conductor of La Scala in Milan.
The artistic estate provides an insight into the workshop of the world-famous and sought-after opera and concert conductor and charismatic artist. Of particular interest are his handwritten notes and entries in the scores, which often include the dates and locations of performances.
The Claudio Abbado Musical Estate (shelf mark: 55 Nachl 110) comprises:
- nearly 2000 volumes of sheet music, including duplicates and copies, as well as 300 conducting notes with handwritten annotations
- over 600 volumes from the private library, including 400 reference books on musicological subjects
- about 9000 letters of professional correspondence
- more than 2500 audio carriers, including about 1500 CDs, about 1000 long-playing records and 130 DVDs, laser discs and video CDs
The indexing of these materials and documents is part of the ongoing project "Musical Estate of Claudio Abbado", in which the rights-free portion is also being digitized and made freely available via the Digitized Collections of the Berlin State Library - PK.
Other materials that have not been catalogued yet can be searched using provisional lists (see below). The majority of the Claudio Abbado Estate is available to users in the Music Reading Room of the Berlin State Library for study and research purposes. This includes the scores, the literature volumes, the recordings and the conductor's professional correspondence with approximately 9000 letters. However, these documents must be treated as personal archive material and can only be made available for use after an examination to ensure that copyright and personal rights are respected.
Abbado's heirs were committed to preserve the estate as an entity wherever possible and to keep his legacy in a suitable place as well as to make the sources, which are free of copyright, accessible for research purposes.
