Another late summer highlight at Lucerne Festival: Simon Rattle and the Berliner Philharmoniker presenting works by Benjamin Britten and Anton Bruckner. Britten gethered eight musical-poetic night pieces together under the title ‘Nocturne’: Musical settings of English poets throughout the centuries perfomed by tenor Ian Bostridge. This cycle of orchestral songs is coupled with Bruckner’s ‘Swan Song,’ his last symphony, which was unfinished and which he dedicated to ‘Dear God’ – Symphony No. 9 in D minor.
Lucerne Festival 2017: Rattle conducts Haydn’s Schöpfung
It was a farewell and the end of an era: Sir Simon Rattle was in Lucerne as principal conductor of the Berliner Philharmoniker one final time this summer. Together, they evoked the original state of the world with a performance of Haydn’s Schöpfung. It was a finale that touched upon life through music – thereby proving once again the distinctiveness and the outstanding standard of the artistic cosmos of Rattle and his orchestra. Earlier in the program, they played “ein kleines symphonisches Gedicht” by Georg Friedrich Haas, who was “composer-in-residence” of the Lucerne Festival in 2011. “Rattle highlights the story of the creation with a great sense of detail” NZZ
LSO: Rattle conducts Sibelius & Bruckner
Sir Simon Rattle conducts music in which vast landscapes merge with the human soul: Sibelius’ tone poems and Bruckner’s radiant Seventh Symphony. Bruckner said that the beginning of his Seventh Symphony came to him in a dream, played by an angel. This huge, glowing mountain-range of sound is basically soul music by any other name. Far away in Finland, meanwhile, Sibelius was thinking big too. Whether it’s the sun dancing on the Mediterranean sea, or the forests of the far north, you can practically feel the freshness in the air. Sir Simon Rattle has been conducting Sibelius since he was a teenager, making him an unrivalled guide through this untamed musical landscape. PROGRAM Sibelius: The Oceanides, Tapiola; Bruckner: Symphony No. 7
LSO: Rattle conducts Christ on the Mount of Olives
In the words of Sir Simon Rattle, Beethoven is “absolutely inescapable”, especially in the year of his 250th anniversary. Nevertheless, Christ on the Mount of Olives is a rarely heard masterpiece and Beethoven’s only oratorio, which combines the emotive force of the composer’s later Missa Solemnis with the theatre of a Bach Passion. With orchestra, chorus and soloists, it tells the story of Jesus’ prayer and arrest in the Garden of Gethsemane. “What Rattle made clear is that the music is full of life. It is hard to imagine this performance being bettered.” (Financial Times)
Lucerne Festival 2013: Simon Rattle conducts Mozart – The Last Three Symphonies
Simon Rattle and the Berlin Philharmonic take on a myth with their complete performance of the last three symphonies by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. For the Romantics, these three scores represented Mozart’ legacy to posterity – but for Rattle they signify an interpretive challenge of the first order: “Here human emotions are pushed to the absolute extreme,” he explains. Mozart’s music is in any case incomparable: “It is deeply emotional and passionate and dark and dangerous and cheerful like no other music that has ever been written.” —– PROGRAM: Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart: Symphony in E-flat major, K. 543 / Symphony in G minor, K. 550 / Symphony in C major, K. 551 (Jupiter)
Lucerne Festival: Simon Rattle conducts Stravinsky and Rachmaninov
The Berliner Philharmoniker have been a regular festival guest in Lucerne since 1958 performing much acclaimed concerts every year. In 2014, the orchestra completed their cycle “Moving to Modern Times” under the baton of Sir Simon Rattle with Igor Stravinsky’s “Firebird”, set to gorgeous, scintillatingly colorful ballet music in 1909-10. Simon Rattle and the Berliner Philharmoniker paired this lush score of oriental lyricism with another masterpiece of the Russian late romanticism: Sergei Rachmaninov’s rousing Symphonic Dances, which likewise escorted listeners into a magical realm of fantasy and “made the Russian soul dance, too.” (Der Spiegel) – PROGRAM: Rachmaninov: Symphonic Dances, op. 45; Stravinsky: The Firebird. Fairy-tale ballet in two tableaux for orchestra. (Cat. No. UNITEL: A955500050000)