How Claudio Abbado bridged old and new

Not long ago the great conductors of classical music were general practitioners. They expected to give satisfactory interpretations of music written from the beginnings of symphonic composition to the present day, and audiences took it for granted that, if they knew what they were doing with Mozart and Beethoven, they could be trusted with Handel and Stravinsky. Their orchestras adopted the same approach and, within a narrow definition that bespeaks a more innocent age, everyone was content. There was little concern that Handel would not have recognised the sound that the instruments of the modern orchestra was making; and no one was disturbed that the big hero figure out front with the histrionic gestures was an anachronism, liable to overblow the delicate textures of both Handel and Stravinsky.

Then came the Early Music revolution of the Seventies and Eighties — preceded by a similar kind of head-scratching in the performance of some contemporary music — and this cosy world was torn apart.