Word: orchestra
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...Sometimes there's a need for some kind of little lemon sorbet." Three years ago the self-governing musicians of the bpo decided that Rattle was just the palate cleanser they needed after the sometimes difficult tenure of Claudio Abbado, the first maestro to announce his retirement in the orchestra's 120-year history. Rattle signed a 10-year contract and has already overseen some changes. Last year he negotiated a deal with Berlin's government that made the orchestra an independent foundation and gave pay increases to the musicians. And the musicians granted Rattle the right to speak...
...Rattle promises that his iconoclasm will flavor the orchestra. His debut program last weekend featured a characteristically diverse selection: Mahler's Fifth Symphony and Asyla, a work by 29-year-old British composer Thomas Adès that Rattle commissioned while in Birmingham...
...radar" to one where "the arts are a profound part of the body politic." As the head of one of Berlin's leading institutions, Rattle will play a central role in the cultural life of a city he calls "the de facto capital of the new Europe." The orchestra reflects this internationalism - its three concert masters are an Israeli, a Pole and a Japanese. And whatever linguistic differences may divide them, all are fluent in the universal language of music. Q&A TIME: You got your new job three years ago. That's a long lag time. RATTLE: A friend...
TIME: How will the BPO's repertoire change under your direction? RATTLE: There are a lot of areas of music that the orchestra has not played much in the last years, surprisingly including Haydn and Mozart. I like to have a good deal of unusual music in a season, but that does not necessarily have to be contemporary...
TIME: What other changes will people notice? RATTLE: It's an astonishingly young orchestra now. I'm not used to thinking of myself as the grey eminence, but sometimes I feel like that. Orchestras constantly change, but also keep a lot of the same characteristics. What is the same and no one would ever want to lose is that it still plays as though it's from the bowels of the earth, as though the sound comes from underneath. This orchestra physically moves more than any other. It's not an orchestra that counts a lot - sometimes they could...