Reports are doing the rounds that Sir Simon Rattle has been anointed as the next chief conductor at the London Symphony Orchestra.
If true, he would succeed Valery Gergiev, who has been in the post since 2007 but recently announced his intention to step down.
The move would make sense for Rattle and for the band. The Brit has been music director at the Berlin Philharmonic for more than a decade--and there aren't that many orchestras considered to be as prestigious as the BPO.
The London Symphony Orchestra, though, is certainly one of them.
But it makes sense for him repertoire-wise as well. Rattle has a great love for British music that the Germans never fully embraced, and a streak of musical daring that pulled the Berliners into the 21st century but, again, one feels the LSO will give his imagination even more room to flourish. It's an orchestra that lives and plays on the edge with vast amounts of repertoire in short periods of time, a lot of travel, and they also like to play leaning forwards, as it were, practically on top of the conductor's beat.
Surely, Rattle will embrace the London Symphony Orchestra's adventurous spirit. It will be like his old days in Birmingham with the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra, but on high-octane.
For the LSO, they get a top-class musician who, one hopes, will take them to musical places new. And almost as important these days, he's a superstar which will keep the sponsors happy.
One final observation--with Esa-Pekka Salonen at the Philharmonia, Charles Dutoit at the Royal Philharmonic and Rattle at the LSO, only 40-year-old Vladimir Jurowski at the London Philharmonic could be considered young.
At a time when everyone seems obsessed with an ostensible focus on extreme youth among music directors, the state of the London orchestras perhaps gives a more balanced view.
