Simon Rattle is coming home for his 60th birthday, in 2015. And he's bringing his German orchestra with him (a little band called the Berlin Philharmonic, you might have heard of them). Together, they will celebrate the milestone in a week-long joint London residency involving both the Barbican Centre and the Southbank Centre.
The Rattle events will center around the music of Sibelius. Which continues something of a British tradition: Brit conductors, from Thomas Beecham to Colin Davis, having long been naturally fascinated with Sibelius' music--arguably being responsible for first bringing it to prominence and consolidating its popularity. In addition to a complete Sibelius symphony cycle and the Violin Concerto played by Leonidas Kavakos, there will also be music by Helmut Lachenmann and Mahler's Second Symphony.
Mahler's Second is also a work close to Rattle's heart and his personal history. He won the Gramophone Record of the Year award for his first recording of it, opened the then-new Symphony Hall in Birmingham with it and programmed it as his farewell to the CBSO. He conducted it recently when taking the BPO on tour to Vienna.
There will also be a large community work strand to the residency, with a family concert and a young mixed-ability orchestra. The Berlin Philharmonic will itself splinter into smaller groups for various events featuring, variously, the 12 cellists of the Berliner Philharmoniker, and the Philharmonic Octet Berlin.
It will be interesting to see how far Rattle manages to ingrain Sibelius into the hearts of his Berlin players. As the conductor notes in a statement on the press release, "Sibelius's music is not frequently performed in Germany, and it is perhaps surprising that the rich, broad sounds of Sibelius really suit this orchestra." But he has, from the start, made a point of championing composers he loves in the German capital, from Elgar to Maw.
Meanwhile, rumors persist that Rattle will be following Gergiev as the next music director of the London Symphony Orchestra. It made sense when that story first broke, earlier this year, and it still makes sense now.
