Every Claudio Abbado concert these days is an event, and this Sunday (May 19) finds him at the helm of the orchestra whose chief conductor he was from 1989 to 2002, the Berliner Philharmoniker. The programme contains two works: excerpts from the Incidental Music for A Midsummer Night's Dream by Felix Mendelssohn – with soloists Deborah York and Stella Doufexis and the women's voices of the Bavarian Radio Symphony Chorus – and Hector Berlioz's Symphonie fantastique.

The concert will be relayed into cinemas around Europe at 7.30 CET (6.30pm in the UK and Ireland). 

Claudio Abbado was presented with Gramophone's Lifetime Achievement Award last year and for the event a number of players from the Berliner Philharmoniker recorded tributes to the conductor. Here's the one from violinist (and now increasingly conductor) Stanley Dodds.