From Bloomberg News Service:

   Claudio Abbado Battles Unions, Practices Orchestral Therapy
   By Shirley Apthorp

   Feb. 5 (Bloomberg) -- Caracas is a surprising place to find
   Claudio Abbado.  The fragile, refined maestro is one of the most
   wanted conductors on the planet.  Yet he chooses to spend more
   than two months a year amid the snarled traffic and sprawling
   urban poverty of the polluted Venezuelan capital, rehearsing and
   performing with the country's top youth orchestra.

   Over 60 percent of the young musicians come from backgrounds of
   extreme poverty.  It's all part of Venezuela's visionary system
   of music education, founded by economist, politician and organist
   Jose Antonio Abreu.

   Abbado, who almost died of stomach cancer in 1998, says working
   on projects like this keeps him alive.  Now painfully thin, with
   a striking combination of frailty and forceful charisma, Abbado,
   73, lives a reclusive life.  He refuses most interview requests
   and keeps public appearances rare.

   In the shabby grandeur of the Central University of Venezuela's
   aula magna, decorated by U.S. sculptor Alexander Calder in better
   days, Abbado has been rehearsing Tchaikovsky's fourth symphony
   and Prokofiev's first piano concerto in preparation for concerts
   in Caracas and Havana.  He took time out to talk to me about
   what he's doing here.

The story continues here:

  http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid 601088&sid=avlZzMk2exkM&refer=muse

Scott Morrison