Amid all the musical Christmas festivities on BBC Radio 3, there are two concerts that could slip under the radar for all but the most assiduous peruser of Radio Times. They fill the 'Afternoon of 3' slot (2pm) on both Boxing Day and December 27 and feature the Lucerne Festival Orchestra conducted by Claudio Abbado. Any Abbado concert is an event, but what sets these two concerts apart are that they were last time that Abbado conducted in public – they took place in September this year, three months after the conductor’s 80th birthday. Ill health has kept him from the podium ever since.

The Boxing Day concert comprises two great unfinished symphonies – Schubert’s Eighth and Bruckner’s Ninth, and the performance were, by all accounts, in an exalted league. George Loomis in The New York Times commented that the 'Schubert unfolded with an unhurried spaciousness that allowed every note to count. The accompanimental pattern in the strings, supporting the first theme played by oboe and clarinet, had such precision and shapeliness that it seemed like noteworthy thematic material in its own right. Over all, the symphony had an imposing splendor that hinted at the Brucknerian majesty to come.’ And Tom Service in his Guardian blog wrote that ‘It was sometimes difficult, even painful, to witness this progress of unadulterated musical spirit. Every note of both symphonies was staged somewhere beyond: removed from the conventions of how they are usually performed, set in a different place from the public realm they most often inhabit. There was no comforting worldliness in Abbado's vision of these pieces: the Schubert was unmoored by his slow tempi and by the gaspingly quiet dynamics this gigantic orchestra produced, which even made the usually gloriously tuneful slow second movement glow with a disturbing, dark light.’

The following afternoon the programme is Brahms’s Tragic Overture, Schoenberg’s Song of the Wood-dove from Gurrelieder (with Mihoko Fujimura) and Beethoven’s Symphony No 3, Eroica.  

Conducting is one of the few professions where ‘ripeness is all’ and, with very few exceptions, age seems to fall away as soon as these elderly men raise the baton. I remember watching an extremely fragile Herbert von Karajan, late in his life, almost revivifying in front of the eyes as he took up his position on the podium, having undertaken a clearly grueling walk from the side of the stage. And there were those extraordinary Bruckner performances from Günter Wand near the end of his life. It would be terribly sad if these were indeed Abbado’s last performances, but if they were, they’d be quite a farewell. Do try and listen (or ‘Listen Again’) and offer up a quiet Christmas prayer that Maestro Abbado will return to the podium in 2014.