Sir Simon Rattle
Biography
Rattle's path towards becoming a musical maestro began when he won the John Player International Conducting Competition at the age of 19.
His early rise included performances at Glyndebourne of Janácek’s opera 'The Cunning Little Vixen', is remembered admirably.
In 1980, he began what was to become a legendary 18-year relationship with the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra, first as principal conductor, then as its music director.
In 2007, the BPO/Rattle recording received the Classic FM Gramophone best choral disc award for Brahms's Ein deutsches Requiem. UNICEF appointed the BPO and Rattle as Goodwill Ambassadors in November 2007.
Music
He established himself as a conductor of world-class expertise in an unusually wide and open-minded repertory, ranging from Haydn through to today’s composers.
His Birmingham concert programmes were delivered with incisive panache that also allowed the CBSO members plenty of room to express themselves. Richard Strauss’s symphonic poems rubbed shoulders with neglected musicals by Leonard Bernstein; Mozart and Mahler co-existed happily together; Stravinsky and Ravel lined up alongside John Adams and Gyorgy Ligeti.
This boundary-crossing approach had increasingly impressed the self-governing Berlin Philharmonic, who were aware of the need to attract new and younger audiences to their concerts. Rattle had guest-conducted the orchestra for several years, winning much respect with his engaging, anti-maestro style and bombproof technical expertise, and, up against Barenboim, he got the job.
Since then, musical life has been buzzing in and around Berlin’s handsome Philharmonie concert hall, just as it did in Birmingham.
His output has included a fine series of recordings includes a magisterial interpretation of Mahler’s Fifth Symphony, a sumptuous response to the splendours of Schoenberg’s cantata Gurrelieder and a keenly-awaited new release of rarely performed symphonic poems by Dvorák.
Discography
2009 - Ravel: L'enfant et le sortileges
2008 - Berlioz: Symponie Fantastique
2008 - Stravinsky: Symphony of Psalms
2007 - Brahms's: Ein deutsches Requiem
Simon Rattle has an extensive number of recordings. For discography click here
