In 1978 John Pidgeon covered the Police's first US tour. Nearly 30 years later he joined the reunited band as they took to the road once more

http://music.guardian.co.uk/rock/story/0,,2155024,00.html

'Whatever we do, this will always be the seminal band'

In 1978 John Pidgeon covered the Police's first US tour. Nearly 30 years later he joined the reunited band as they took to the road once more

Friday August 24, 2007
The Guardian

On page 253 of his compellingly readable memoir, One Train Later, Andy Summers logs the April 1978 release of the Police's Roxanne, adding tersely, "It gets reviewed by John Pidgeon in Melody Maker." That short statement telescopes into a more convoluted reality. True, for one issue only, I was MM's singles reviewer, though not until mid-October, by which time Roxanne was a six-month-old stiff. But that record was still a hit on my turntable, so I made it the yardstick by which I would judge the new releases.

Roxanne had come at me out of nowhere on a wavering car radio signal, as so much rock'n'roll of my short-trousered youth had, title or artist's name or both obscured by static, leaving only a half-heard lyric and melodic hook lodged in my brain along with a memory of the palpable thrill they had provoked. It took a trawl of record shops to track it down. "It was the Police's Roxanne, and it still makes me tingle," I preambled. "I had no idea who they were, and I still don't really, but I don't care. Roxanne is simply a great single." And if that reads like an all-too-obvious endorsement of an acknowledged pop classic, remember: Roxanne was a flop, a sleeper that wouldn't chart until May 1979.

My singles column appeared on Thursday October 12. No one had matched Roxanne - not Elton John, not PiL, not Bruce Springsteen. That afternoon A&M Records' press office rang, asking if I would be free to spend some time on the road with the Police in November. Let me check my diary. In the States? I'm free.

I had already seen the Police play live, at one of the scant 10 gigs they had played since April. The venue was the Nashville Room in West Kensington, and I was accompanied by two pals, former Faces keyboard player Ian McLagan, who'd been every bit as excited as I had on hearing Roxanne, and lugubrious, lovable Kevin Coyne, in whose band Andy Summers had played and who was intrigued by his erstwhile guitarist's punk makeover. While Kevin chuckled over Summers' bottle-blond hair, Mac and I scoured the sparse crowd for someone who might be Sting, our only sight of the singer having been an arty Xeroxed image on the single's sleeve. It was the parachute suit and peroxide crop that persuaded us we'd found him, but, to be certain, Mac asked, "You're Sting, aren't you?" to which Sting responded, "Yes, but you're Ian McLagan."

Half a lifetime later, on July 28 2007, after the first of two formidable performances at Boston's Fenway Park on the US leg of their reunion tour, the Police are convoyed back to their hotel with a full lights-and-sirens police escort, each intersection cleared of cross traffic, every red light run as green. Having sprinted from stage to car, Stewart Copeland heads for his room to shower. A couple in the lift have seen the cavalcade arrive going the wrong way up a one-way street. The woman will rail against this extravagant abuse of her top-rate tax dollars, but, before she does, her husband asks the still-sweating drummer what he has done to merit such treatment. Copeland grins and says, "Easy, why d'you think I named my band the Police?"

My band. Which it had been, originally. Having tired of the unwinnable race to recoup record company advances, been invigorated by the punk scene, and spotted a singing bass player in Newcastle ready to try his luck in London, Copeland had not only come up with a name for the group, but composed its entire repertoire of mile-a-minute thrash and found a three-chord Corsican guitarist, Henry Padovani, to help play it.

"It was a difficult period," confided Sting, that singing bass player, in 1978. "Stewart had wanted to form a new wave group, but I'd just come down from playing in a jazz group and I wasn't exactly keen, but I was inspired by the amazing energy of the whole thing, and I thought, 'Well, I'm new to London and I'm totally unknown, so I'll give it a go.' We did a 15-minute lightning set and I squealed and screamed."

Then Summers, already an experienced player, saw them at the Marquee. "I thought there was fantastic potential in Sting and Stewart," he explained. "I'd always wanted to play in a three-piece band and throughout all my years of playing I never had. I felt that the three of us together would be very strong. They just needed another guitarist and I thought I was the one." The group played a French punk festival as a four-piece; then there were three.

The effect of Summers' arrival was instant. "One by one, Sting's songs had started coming in," Copeland explained, "and when Andy joined, it opened up new numbers of Sting's we could do, so the material started to get a lot more interesting and Sting started to take a lot more interest in the group." Despite the lack of progress represented by those 10 UK gigs in seven months, Copeland insists today that he never doubted - "never for a second" - that the trio would make it, the core of his unshakable confidence being his belief in Sting.

"The minute I saw Sting," he recalls, "playing in the refectory [of St Mary's College, Newcastle], I thought, 'There is a unique talent that is going all the way to the top.' Once we were in a band together, I would go on stage knowing that whatever was going to go wrong, Sting was going to kick ass, and he wasn't going to quit until he'd got the place going."

Summers joined the Police in August 1977 - lending this current tour, which comes to the UK on September 4, the air of a 30th anniversary - and owns up to moments of doubt during those first 12 months. "We'd been at it for a year, and just basically hanging by a thread," he recalls. "There wasn't anything happening. There was no point in doing gigs, because we'd end up with about two quid each a night. Then we lined up that first little tour of the East Coast of the US, and that's where it started."

I met them in Washington, DC, on November 10 1978, and took advantage of my tab at the Watergate Hotel, several stars swankier than the band's budget accommodation, to treat them to dinner. After two shows at the Atlantic Club, I joined them in their van for the drive to Philadelphia, where they played the half-empty Grendel's Lair, then we drove to New York for two final gigs at CBGB.

The tour had been made possible by three things: Freddie Laker's pioneering Skytrain, which delivered the trio and their tour manager to New York for £100 each; an Econoline van with two rows of seats and space behind for equipment, which their manager, Miles Copeland (Stewart's brother) had bought earlier in the year for a Squeeze tour; and the support of a third Copeland, Ian, an agent who would not have picked up the phone to book $200 club gigs for anyone other than his kid brother. That fee covered two modest hotel rooms, fuel for the van, and a $20 per diem each for food and drink. Some nights they made more, which took care of extras and their flights back to the UK.

On my own (non-Laker) flight home, I composed the opening paragraph of my piece: "The Police are not punk. The Police are not disco. The Police are not heavy metal. The Police are not power pop. The Police are just the best rock and roll band I've seen in years." I assured MM's editor they would be the next big thing and, as such, deserved the cover, but when the issue appeared they had been demoted to an inside spread, with rockabilly voodoo weirdos the Cramps on the front instead.

By then the Police were back in the UK, supporting student favourites Alberto y Lost Trios Paranoias on a short tour, during which it became clear to Summers that "there was something serious happening. The period of self-doubt probably disappeared with the Alberto gig in Bath [on December 1], where there was just this mob scene and hysterical girls, and that was the moment when we went, 'Wait a minute.' That was a turning point, and we started to go like a rocket after that."

Six years earlier, my first major assignment as a music journalist had been to tour, riotously, with the Faces, and as recently as July 1978 I'd caught the end of the Stones' US tour in California, more fun and games. But in Washington, with the Police, I visited the National Air and Space Museum; on a night off in Philadelphia we went to the cinema; and in the van we talked about books. Photographed in New York, Sting hid neither his glasses nor the copy of Daniel Martin he was reading. I remember thinking, sure, the other way is fun, but there's no denying theirs is a practical, economic approach to touring. Those thoughts stayed with me, until, reading One Train Later, I came across Summers' sardonic description of his on-the-road self in 1982: "I am a rock-and-roll asshole, an emaciated millionaire prick." How did he get to that from where I'd left them? Could the clue be in the penultimate word? "It got much more dissolute as time went on," he confirms. "It did turn into the usual clichéd stuff, where everywhere we turned up there was a party. The rot set in. You know, the water keeps hitting the rock and it finally starts to crumble." Sting's assessment of their excess is more moderate. "We never really qualified as rock and roll animals ever," he says. "It never crossed my mind to trash a hotel room or get completely fucked up. We dabbled."

By the early 80s, of course, the Police had become the biggest band in the world, in August 1983 playing Shea Stadium in New York, a marker for mega-popdom set in 1966 by the Beatles. By then the three were reputed to be permanently at each other's throats. Yet, in 2005, when Stewart Copeland got round to editing the 50 hours of Super-8 he had shot on the road and in the studio for his film, Everyone Stares: The Police Inside Out, and he reached the moment where the band broke up, the only footage he could find was of them goofing around. While pointing out that he would not have been filming when they weren't getting on, he admits that Sting's anguished look, inserted into the film to signify strife, was in reality a frown of concentration as the singer worked on a vocal harmony.

"People have asked what went wrong back in the day," Copeland expands, "and the answer is it didn't go wrong, it went rather well actually. We broke up at exactly the right time. What would have gone wrong is if we had stuck together to the point where we hated each other and started to hurt each other and self-destruct. That would have been wrong."

After the final gig in Melbourne in 1984, all three, he says, "hit the ground running." Each made signally non-Police music. Sting's first solo album, The Dream of Blue Turtles, was "a real patchwork of all kinds of styles. I was just having fun as a songwriter, and I carried that on in the interim." Summers formed new musical alliances, played jazz, pursued his interest in photography. Most strikingly, for a decade Copeland didn't pick up a drum stick. "I was a film composer, and not only that, but I was desperate to escape type-casting as the drum-score film composer, and so for many years I was writing scores with no discernible rhythm at all. I went a little too far, as you do when you've got something to prove."

In his memoir Summers writes of "the ache of something unresolved ... The problem with the demise of our group is that we didn't play out all our potential," though he now admits: "We had it all there in a way. But I definitely felt wounded afterwards. It felt like something was stolen and I had to deal with it. Then I occasionally thought, 'Maybe it was the best thing to do.' I didn't just want to be in a pop band."

Distilled into a two-hour live show, the Police's musical history feels fulfillingly complete. Every stage of their musical journey, from the proto-punk of Next To You to the enigmatic universality of Every Breath You Take, is revisited. And, surprisingly perhaps, although the songs are all familiar, they still sound vital, visceral, with emotion or meaning still to impart.

Confounding red-top gossip, the three are emphatic that some form of alliance survived the intervening years. Copeland says, "We have a basic underlying respect and, I would say, love for each other, the three of us. There's a bond there that none of us can shake off." Sting agrees: "Relations with Andy and Stewart have always been cordial. We didn't see much of each other, but it's bullshit that we've been at loggerheads for years and years."

"Over the last twenty years," Copeland adds, "people in my company have assumed that what I like to hear is Sting-bashing, so I hear a lot of it, and I'm sure I don't need to tell you what the opinions are. I tell these friends of mine, 'If Sting was here now with a guitar in his hands, you would within moments realise he's the most talented, gifted musician you've ever met - ever.' Because he is."

"Despite all the crap written about us, how we all hate each other, we're not like that, it's such bullshit," Summers confirms. "If that was the truth, we wouldn't have been able to come back together and do this. Whatever we do, this is always going to be the seminal band we were all in."

While Copeland was assembling his film, Summers was writing his book, a project with the potential, he became increasingly aware, to put paid for good to any chance of a reunion. But he stuck to his aim "to be completely honest, not to do some varnished story. What I was interested in was the fragility of it, how it's always about to collapse at any point, and how difficult it is to bring three egos together and sustain it for a long period of time. It was necessary to talk about the arguments, the difficulties, the tension, as well as paying tribute to the talents of the other two. When I got the book out, I thought they may never speak to me again, but in fact the reverse happened. Sting was very complimentary."

Recalling his suggestion for the running order of the Police's final album, Synchronicity, Summers wrote spikily: "Sting likes this idea, and thus it is ordained." If a reunion was ever going to take place, Sting would need to like that idea too - as eventually he did, surprising even himself.

"I woke up one morning in November last year, and the John Dowland record [Songs From the Labyrinth, Sting's lute recordings] had just gone in the charts, so I was very happy about that, and I thought, 'What do I do now? Should I do that again? No, that'll paint me into a corner. Do I do another Sting album? No, I'm not really ready for it. What do I do to surprise people? Or surprise myself even?' And this little voice said, 'You reform the Police.' And another little voice said, 'Don't be ridiculous, you don't want to do that,' but this persistent voice said, 'No, that'll really surprise everyone.' And surprise, as you know, is everything in this business. So I had a meeting with my manager, floated the idea, and she fell off her chair. We phoned Andy and Stewart, and they didn't believe it either, because I'd been so adamant. If you'd asked me the day before, I would've said, 'You're out of your fucking mind. I don't want to do that.' But suddenly everybody clicked with it, it just triggered something, and the timing was perfect."

With Sting long accustomed to tailoring the musical setting for his solo shows - "having my own way or 'You're fired!'" - what form would the line-up take? Backing singers? A keyboard player? Horns? Summers, for one, was initially apprehensive. "In the early days we did one tour with backing singers and one with saxophones, which I personally hated. I thought, it's got to be the band, the three of us, or not at all, and there was absolutely no contest about that. Because Sting is a natural musician, he's a player. He's not some singer who's got old and fat, he's the real thing."

"My instinct was it should be us raw, warts and all," Sting says, "and I was pleasantly surprised at the first rehearsal. Although it certainly wasn't polished, there were still moments of, 'Oh, that's why we were good, that's why we were successful.' So rehearsal was just about joining those moments together and expanding them, and I think we're still on the way."

Their once-teenage fans are now in their 40s, and from his drum stool Copeland has observed other changes: "At the front we used to have a lot of teenage females fainting. Now we have grown men weeping." Weeping for what? Their lost youth? "I guess that's what it is. There are certain songs, and I look out there and they're weeping inconsolably. It makes me feel good. It hits me with, 'I guess it must be important what we're doing.' I mean, it isn't, it's just music, but it does affect people - and that affects me."

The reunion is scheduled to end in February 2008, when Copeland is looking forward to getting back to being a composer and suburban dad, and Summers will be braced for a post-tour crash before immersing himself in diverse projects. Sting, as always, is eager to embrace the future. "Nothing goes on forever, and once you accept that, that's a great relief," he says. "If I thought I was agreeing to be manacled for ever to this thing, like Sisyphus, I wouldn't have come into it. I think freedom, even to go back, is what I want - to contradict myself, to go back on what I thought was dogma, to be open."

So what is this bond, the shared chemistry that took these three from half-empty clubs to the biggest stages in the world, and still has people filling stadiums to see them? Does the man who formed the Police have the answer? "There are times when Sting and I shake our heads at the disparity in our music values," Copeland offers, "and yet there are 60,000 people out there that want to hear us play together. How's that possible? We disagree so deeply and profoundly about fundamental pillars of our artistic philosophy that sometimes we look at each other and it's not just like we come from different planets, but that different rules of physics apply, and, like I say, we shake our heads and wonder at the strangeness of life that you put these two value systems together and something happens that makes people cry."

· The Police's Their Greatest Hits is available on A&M. The band's European tour opens in Stockholm on August 29. Their first UK date is at Birmingham NIA on September 4.

· Andy Summers' exhibition I'll Be Watching You: Inside the Police 1980-1983 is at Jill George Gallery, 38 Lexington Street, London, from August 30 to September 10.

... I will turn your FACE to alabaster.

Claudio Abbado is seen as the finest conductor in the world - yet he doesn't tell orchestras how to play. Claudio Abbado grants Tom Service a rare interview aboard a private jet

Claudio_Abbado_Guardian_UK

The maestro

He is seen as the finest conductor in the world - yet he doesn't tell orchestras how to play. Claudio Abbado grants Tom Service a rare interview aboard a private jet

Wednesday August 22, 2007
The Guardian

The Italian conductor Claudio Abbado is rehearsing the hundred-plus players of his hand-picked Lucerne Festival Orchestra in Mahler's Third Symphony, in the splendour of Jean Nouvel's concert hall in Lucerne, a performance he repeats at the Proms tonight. There's a moment, right at the end, that embodies the symbiotic alchemy between the conductor and the musicians. Mahler's final chord is a long-held affirmation of love, of song. The Lucerne players give Abbado a magnificent, full-bodied sound, apparently playing at the limits of their ability. But as the double-basses pick out a sonorous note right at the bottom of their instruments, Abbado glances over at them, and suddenly the whole orchestra is supported by a massive upswelling, a sonic foundation on which the rest of the orchestra floats.

For anyone who has ever wondered what conductors actually do up there on the podium, and what possible difference their elusive semaphore makes to a huge group of musicians, here is incontrovertible proof: the orchestra has discovered, through Abbado, a new level of intensity and expression. Later, he tells me that his eyes are the most important tools he uses to communicate with his musicians, and after seeing what a single look can do, it's easy to understand him. It's a conclusion that caps the spiritual progress of this gigantic symphony - the longest in the repertoire, nearly an hour and three-quarters - and the epic trajectory of Abbado's interpretation.

And that was just the rehearsal. Abbado, at 74, is producing the most intense performances of the late-Romantic repertoire of his career, and, with the Lucerne Festival Orchestra, the most responsive and revelatory orchestral playing I have ever heard. The two performances of Mahler's Third Symphony in Lucerne over the weekend, seemed, unbelievably, to grow in power minute by minute. "The last one was the best", Abbado says of the shattering performance on Sunday, and I agree. The Proms audience is in for an unforgettable experience tonight. It's hard to imagine, but there are still new depths for Abbado and his orchestra to discover. "I love playing at the Proms," Abbado says, "whether with the London Symphony Orchestra, when I was with them, or with the Gustav Mahler Youth Orchestra, or the Berlin or Vienna Philharmonic. The acoustic may not be the best, but when the Royal Albert Hall is full, there is a unique atmosphere. It's very special."

But even more special is the story of Abbado's creation and development of the Lucerne Festival Orchestra itself. There is nothing else like it in classical music. The ensemble is the culmination of a lifetime of searching for the right conditions to make orchestral music. Abbado was diagnosed with stomach cancer in 2000, and when he came back to work after his operation - he has had half his digestive system removed - he set about the Lucerne project with astonishing energy, as well as, among other things, conducting a new production of Wagner's Parsifal in Salzburg in 2002. His physical frailty was shocking at the time, and is still disconcerting. When I meet him at the airport - he is careful to conserve his energy in Lucerne, and it's only when he invites me to share his flight back on a private plane that we can talk - I'm struck by his small stature, so different from how an audience sees him on the podium, and his lined, deeply expressive face. He tells me that "because of my belly, I have to be careful how I travel," and what he eats. But it doesn't stop him munching through an apple pie on the plane. And just as his enthusiasm and intensity on stage are apparently ageless, his charm and humour are boundless. He is a committed environmentalist, talking proudly of the 9,000 trees he has planted around his house in Sardinia. "And now the animals - rabbits, hares, deer, wild boar - have come back, spontaneously." He tells me he drives a hybrid Toyota Prius, but when I point out that travelling by private jet possibly isn't the best way to minimise your carbon footprint, he smiles and says, "Well, there are some things in life you just have to accept!"

The Lucerne project symbolises the strength of Abbado's recovery, and his continued desire to explore new territory. Every summer since 2003, he has brought together the musicians closest to him to create a symphony orchestra with a difference: an ensemble founded on the principles of chamber music. As he says: "It is one of the most important things: all the musicians in the orchestra, they are listening to one another." When you watch Abbado work with them, his approach is the opposite of what you would expect from an all-powerful maestro. Instead of telling the musicians what to do, he shows them how to listen. His left hand - whose graceful, sweeping gestures British conductor Daniel Harding has justifiably described as "the most beautiful" in music - invites them to share the music with each another. It's chamber music on a huge scale: a simple philosophy, but one that would be impossibly ambitious - and expensive - for any other conductor to realise on the scale that it has happened in Lucerne, doubly so without the support of the festival and its artistic director, Michael Haefliger.

It all means that you can't quite believe who you are seeing when you look round at who's playing in the Lucerne orchestra: the cellos, for example, are led by soloist and Rostropovich pupil Natalia Gutman, and Clemens Hagen and Valentin Erben share the second desk, cellists who usually play with two of the world's finest string quartets, the Hagen and Alban Berg. Clarinettist Sabine Meyer and the sublime players of her wind ensemble take the principal slots in the woodwind, and the brass section is a who's who of soloists from international orchestras. This is the Harlem Globetrotters of orchestral music, but unlike most ad-hoc groups of sporting stars, what's astonishing is how this ensemble, who only come together for a few weeks every year, work so completely with and for one another.

The reason for their collective brilliance is the players' individual relationships with Abbado. On one hand, his career is the epitome of the international classical music star: he was in charge of the opera of La Scala in Milan, his home town, for 18 years until 1986, music director of the London Symphony Orchestra from 1979-87, then succeeded Herbert von Karajan as the conductor of the Berlin Philharmonic in 1989; Abbado did not renew his contract, and left the Berliners in 2002. But along with these high-flying appointments, Abbado has founded a raft of orchestras of young people, such as the European Community Youth Orchestra in 1978, the Gustav Mahler Youth Orchestra (some of whose players went on to found the Mahler Chamber Orchestra, which in turn forms the core of the Lucerne Orchestra), and, most recently, the Orchestra Mozart. It's these ensembles, he says, that embody his core philosophy of music-making. "The idea started when I was teaching chamber music in Parma, in the early 60s. I didn't have many engagements then, so I needed to do something" - in fact, even at this stage, Abbado had turned down the principal conductorship of an American orchestra, having won the conducting prize at the Tanglewood summer school in Massachusetts in 1958. "Teaching was a great experience. I learned a lot from these young musicians. We played everything - Stravinsky's Histoire du Soldat without conductor, Bartok's Sonata for Two Pianos and Percussion - making chamber music with large groups. So when I started the European Community Youth Orchestra, it was a continuation of the same process."

And behind the ideal of chamber music-making is Abbado's notion of listening, a central philosophy of his life for almost as long as he can remember. As a child, he played the piano to accompany his father, a violinist, and learned the true secret of being a musician: that it is more important to be able to listen than to be able to play. "And in life too," he says. "I remember when I was a student, and there were of lot of young people, in my age group, and they came to me to talk, and they told me stories, very strange, very difficult and very personal. But I was listening. And they came to trust me."

Despite his time in charge of orchestras in London, Vienna and Berlin, Abbado says: "I knew that you could get better music in a better way with this way of listening. You know, in America, there are wonderful orchestras everywhere, but I never accepted a position there, because I can't fight with the unions. In Vienna and Berlin it's better because there are many more musicians playing chamber music. But in American orchestras, they have maybe one string quartet, but it's the mentality. The terrible thing is that the players of orchestras like that, they finish the rehearsal not because the music is finished, but because the time is finished. Here in Lucerne, we can continue, shorter, longer, just as we like it. And you know, during the concert, even more than during the rehearsal, it's fantastic to hear not just how they play, but how they follow. It's like - to breathe together."

The mystery is how Abbado creates the collective intensity and concentration that carries through all his rehearsals and performances with the Lucerne orchestra. But he doesn't see it that way. "I don't think there is a mystery," he says, "it's very natural, very spontaneous. We understand each other. And I have worked with these players, like Wolfram Christ [leader of the violas], for many years. You may have noticed in rehearsal, I don't speak very much" - and he doesn't, using only occasional phrases in his Italian-accented German or English - "Listen!" - or having brief conversations with his leader, violinist Kolja Blacher. "It's enough to show them." Ultimately, the success of the Lucerne project comes from Abbado's relationship with the players. Every musician comes, often giving up their summer holidays, because of their respect for him and his way of working. And yet, for all its utopian ideals, Abbado is sanguine about the orchestra's future. "In my life there are always moments when I find limits to things. I set up the European Community Youth Orchestra, and they said the players were limited by the countries of the European Union, so I said, but there are musicians from Austria, from Switzerland, Russia, who want to play with me, so I made an orchestra to play with them, the Gustav Mahler Youth Orchestra. And in Lucerne, if I find some limits, I will stop - and I will do something else."

For the moment though, the only limits seem to be Abbado's and the player's imaginations, an endlessly renewable resource. Abbado's creative energy is fuelled not just by music, but by his passions for nature, film and literature; he has just discovered the short stories of the Polish-born American writer Isaac Bashevis Singer, and the Lucerne festival celebrates the creative fruits of his friendship with Andrei Tarkovsky this summer. It's an openness that comes from the person he describes as "the most inspiring person in my life": his grandfather on his mother's side. "He taught ancient languages at the university in Palermo in Sicily. And every five years, he was studying a new culture, and learning a new language. He was studying Aramaic, and he made a translation of the Bible that spoke about the brothers and sisters of Jesus. So he was excommunicated from the church in 1915. He was so open. When he died, he was 96, and to the last days, they used to ask him, 'Please can you tell us, what is the meaning of this hieroglyph?'" Abbado's love of nature also has its roots in his relationship with his grandfather. He remembers as a small child, walking with him near the Matterhorn. "I learned such a lot from him. He used just a few words. I learned to listen to silence." It's a lesson Abbado gives to his musicians, and his audiences too: the silence at the end of Mahler's Third Symphony, as that final chord fades away tonight, will be among the most powerful the Albert Hall has ever heard.

· Claudio Abbado conducts the Lucerne Festival Orchestra at the Proms tonight, Royal Albert Hall, London SW7. They open Carnegie Hall's season in New York with a series of concerts starting on October 4. The Lucerne Festival runs until September 16. Details: www.lucernefestival.ch.

'Claudio lets you be free'

Musicians recall the joys of working with Abbado

Wolfram Christ
Principal viola, Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra and principal viola, Lucerne Festival Orchestra

Abbado asked me to be involved with the Lucerne Festival Orchestra in 1999, saying he was going to invite a group of top soloists, chamber players and orchestral musicians to form a festival orchestra maybe once a year. I wouldn't give up my free time like this for anyone else, only him, and I wasn't sure how he was going to make it work, as orchestras like the Berlin Philharmonic work for years to establish their sound. But at the first rehearsal I was overwhelmed. It was special because at the heart of the orchestra are chamber musicians who know how to listen and this is one of Abbado's special qualities, too - he works with an orchestra to make them listen to each other.

He dedicates himself to the music. In a concert, he can really let himself relax and fall into it. He's never a person who tries to show off and look at himself from the outside, asking, 'Do I look good on the podium?' Rather, he's with the music, not interested in being a conductor, but totally with the music - both body and spirit. He has that great gift of inspiration. He is unique.

Robert Bourton
Principal bassoon, London Symphony Orchestra

I was a member of the London Symphony Orchestra when Claudio Abbado was appointed its principal conductor in 1979. It was immediately apparent that he was a conductor who demanded the highest standards, and he achieved this goal with quiet persistence at rehearsals. During one particularly intense period, a player passed a comment to him that the LSO always saved 50% for the concert, which was why the players did not always give of their best at rehearsals. "Ah," said Claudio, "but I need to get you up to the 50% in the first place!"

He is committed to performing music by living composers, notably his Italian colleagues Luigi Nono and Luigi Dallapiccola. But I will always remember his Mahler, the huge Mahler, Vienna and the 20th Century festival in 1985 which heralded a new era for the LSO's concert-giving. It is still one of the highlights of my career.

Diego Matheuz
Co-leader, Simón Bolívar Youth Orchestra of Venezuela and assistant conductor to Gustavo Dudamel and Claudio Abbado

I have worked with Maestro Abbado on many occasions, both as a player and an assistant, and have performed such great works as Beethoven Nine, Mahler Five, Tchaikovsky Four and Stravinsky's Firebird with Abbado in Venezuela, Spain and Italy. He is one of the best conductors in the world, and for me the most special thing about him as a person is his humility. He is a great figure and an inspirational example to the young people of our orchestra, and yet when he works with us he likes to have fun and seems so normal. He makes a lot of jokes and often makes the orchestra laugh, though he is always serious about the music. As a conductor, he is musical to the extreme and his phrasing is unique.

Richard Hosford
Principal clarinet, BBC Symphony Orchestra

I first started working with him in the European Union Youth Orchestra, or the ECYO back then, which he founded in the early 80s. He is passionate about youth orchestras; he loves working with young people, he loves the energy and enthusiasm. That's why he keeps forming and working with new youth orchestras.

As a wind player, I find the really special thing about him is that he lets you play. If you're doing something that he likes, even if he didn't think of it, he will go with you. And if you've got the solo line, he'll make the orchestra follow you. He encourages you in your ideas rather than dogmatically telling you what he wants.

Some of the most amazing concerts I've done have been with him. He's an inspirational performer, and inspiration is something that he has in abundance. I still remember a Brahms serenade concert that we did in Budapest, back before the wall came down. I remember the audience being overwhelmed, but then so were we.

Julia Neher
Viola player, Lucerne Festival Orchestra and Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra

There's something special about the atmosphere he creates in concerts. It's something I've never experienced with other conductors; I don't know how he does it. In rehearsals he's exciting, but when the concert starts, it's magic.

He lets you be free as a musician, yet somehow he makes us also play together as an orchestra. We're a big orchestra, but it's as if we're playing as chamber musicians.

I first worked with him three years ago in the Mahler Youth Orchestra. I was 21, and I was pretty intimidated by the idea of working with him - and also very excited. But I found he was a really nice guy - friendly, funny and very human.

· Interviews by ChaiHong Lim

"Alguien sueña"

de Jorge Luis Borges

¿Qué habrá soñado el Tiempo hasta ahora, que es, como todos los ahoras , el ápice? Ha soñado la espada, cuyo mejor lugar es el verso. Ha soñado y labrado la sentencia, que puede simular la sabiduría. Ha soñado la fe, ha soñado las atroces Cruzadas. Ha soñado a los griegos que descubrieron el diálogo y la duda. Ha soñado la aniquilación de Cartago por el fuego y la sal. Ha soñado la palabra, ese torpe y rígido símbolo. Ha soñado la dicha que tuvimos o que ahora soñamos haber tenido. Ha soñado la primera mañana de Ur. Ha soñado el misterioso amor de la brújula. Ha soñado la proa del noruego y la proa del portugués. Ha soñado la ética y las metáforas del más extraño de los hombres, el que murió una tarde en una cruz. Ha soñado el sabor de la cicuta en la lengua de Sócrates. Ha soñado esos dos curiosos hermanos, el eco y el espejo. Ha soñado el libro, ese espejo que siempre nos revela otra cara. Ha soñado el espejo en que Francisco López Merino y su imagen se vieron por última vez. Ha soñado el espacio. Ha soñado la música, que puede prescindir del espacio. Ha soñado el arte de la palabra, aún más inexplicable que el de la música, porque incluye la música. Ha soñado una cuarta dimensión y la fauna singular que la habita. Ha soñado el número de la arena. Ha soñado los números transfinitos, a los que se llega contando. Ha soñado al primero que en el trueno oyó el nombre de Thor. Ha soñado las opuestas caras de Jano, que no se verán nunca. Ha soñado la luna y los dos hombres que caminaron por la luna. Ha soñado el pozo y el péndulo. Ha soñado a Walt Whittman, que decidió ser todos los hombres, como la divinidad de Spinoza. Ha soñado el jazmín, que no puede saber que lo sueñan. Ha soñado las generaciones de hormigas y las generaciones de los reyes. Ha soñado la vasta red que tejen todas las arañas del mundo. Ha soñado el arado y el martillo, el cáncer y la rosa, las campanadas del insomnio y el ajedrez. Ha soñado la enumeración que los tratadistas llaman caótica y que de hecho es cósmica, porque todas las cosas están unidas por vínculos secretos. Ha soñado a mi abuela Frances Haslam en la guarnición de Junín, a un trecho de las lanzas del desierto, leyendo su Biblia y su Dickens. Ha soñado que en las batallas los tártaros cantaban. Ha soñado la mano de Hokusai, trazando una línea que será muy pronto una ola. Ha soñado a Yorick, que vive para siempre en unas palabras del ilusorio Hamlet. Ha soñado los arquetipos. Ha soñado que a lo largo de los veranos, o en un cielo anterior a los veranos, hay una sola rosa. Ha soñado las caras de tus muertos, que ahora son empañadas fotografías. Ha soñado la primera mañana de Uxmal. Ha soñado el acto de la sombra. Ha soñado las cien puertas de Tebas. Ha soñado los pasos del laberinto. Ha soñado el nombre secreto de Roma, que era su verdadera muralla. Ha soñado la vida de los espejos. Ha soñado la vida de los espejos. Ha soñado los signos que trazará el escriba sentado. Ha soñado una esfera de marfil que guarda otras esferas. Ha soñado el calidoscopio, grato a los ocios del enfermo y del niño. Ha soñado el desierto. Ha soñado el alba que acecha. Ha soñado el Ganges y el Támesis, que son nombres de agua. Ha soñado mapas que Ulises no habría comprendido. Ha soñado a Alejandro de macedonia. Ha soñado el muro del Paraíso, que detuvo a Alejandro. Ha soñado el mar y la lágrima. Ha soñado el cristal. Ha soñado que alguien lo sueña. http://www.geocities.com/marcelamr/suena.html