Type: Classical Music
Orchestra: Berlin Philharmonic
Program: Beethoven's Symphony No. 8 in F major, Op. 93
Conductor: Claudio Abbado
Year: 2008

Claudio Abbado conducts this celebrated symphony with a calm, finely shaped sense of nature’s changing moods. He shapes the symphony as a sequence of unfolding scenes. The opening movement moves with an easy, unforced momentum. In the “Scene by the Brook,” the music is allowed to breathe, its details emerging without exaggeration, and the storm arrives with energy but without excessive weight. The performance resolves with quiet assurance that is calm and balanced, bringing Beethoven’s evocation of nature to life.