The celebrated conductor Claudio Abbado died on Jan. 16 at his home in Bologna, Italy. The world has lost one of the most inspiring musicians of our era.

Known as the "musicians' musician," Abbado conducted almost all the world's leading orchestras, from the London Symphony Orchestra (LSO) and the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, to the Vienna Philharmonic and the Berlin Philharmonic. He was appointed music director of La Scala in 1968 and held the position until 1986. His concerts won the acclaim of audiences worldwide. His concerts were praised as "indelible, life-changing moments."

Abbado devoted his entire life to making beautiful music. He called himself a "perfectionist" and to him, any sound worth making had to be a beautiful one. "Without music, the world would be a terrible place," he once remarked.

Abbado almost always conducted from memory, as he believed using a score meant the conductor did not know the work well enough. My set of Beethoven's nine symphonies on DVD, performed by Abbado and the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra, often amazed me as he conducted all of them from memory, including the 70-minute Ninth Symphony (Chorale). The nuance, the sonority, the sweep of the melodic lines and the rich coloring of the orchestra are just out of this world.

But he looked a little awkward when he took curtain calls. He said "I'm not a showman." In fact, he strongly disliked showmanship.

Abbado championed many contemporary works, and liked to work with young musicians. He founded the European Community Youth Orchestra for musicians aged 14 to 20. He formed the Gustav Mahler Youth Orchestra and the Mahler Chamber Orchestra with the best players from around the world, which he hand-picked. It was with that orchestra that the talented young Chinese pianist Yuja Wang joined in a memorable performance of Rachmaninov's "Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini" and the Second Piano Concerto.

Wang, known to be able to do "everything the piano can do," was so impressed by Maestro Abbado that she said "He plays with very few soloists these days (April 2010), so it was a particular honor -- I'd happily have played anything he wanted me to play."

The maestro did not hesitate to take a political position. He conducted a concert against fascism in Italy at La Scala. "I voted for the Communists simply because they were the opposition to the fascists," he said. "I believe in freedom; I protest everything that is against freedom."

Let me add in passing that the American conductor Leonard Bernstein, who reportedly told the young Abbado that he had "a conductor's eyes," was himself a liberal and was proud of it. The celebrated Italian pianist Maurizio Pollini is also a left-wing political activist. He performed with Claudio Abbado at La Scala in a cycle of concerts for students and workers, in an attempt to build a new public as they believed that art should be for everybody. The two collaborated in a cycle of all of the Beethoven piano concertos, of which the mystic Fourth is the most arresting.

Last year, Abbado was appointed senator for life in the parliament of his native Italy.

Matteo Renzi, leader of the centre-left Democratic Party, paid tribute to Abbado's "extraordinary greatness."

The author is a columnist with China.org.cn. For more information please visit: http://www.china.org.cn/opinion/zhaojinglun.htm

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