Imon Rattle

Melodious and charming, The Cunning Little Vixen is a work rooted in Czech history and folk music; a sentimental journey through the cycles of life. For Sir Simon Rattle, it's a deeply personal and emotional work. "It's the piece that made me want to become an opera conductor… and still one of the pieces that reduces me to tears more easily than any other," says the LSO's Music Director. Recorded with an outstanding cast during semi-staged performances, this recording is the second in an LSO Live series showcasing acclaimed collaborations between Rattle and the celebrated stage director Peter Sellars. Towering fanfares open Janácek's Sinfonietta, an ode to the composer's hometown of Brno in the now Czech Republic. It's a portrait composed for a national celebration of Slavic culture, with Janácek's love of musical tradition evident in dancing strings and celebratory brass.

Sir Simon Rattle and the London Symphony Orchestra pay homage to Leonard Bernstein with a recording of Wonderful Town that captures the energy and excitement of sold-out performances from December 2017. Featuring an all-star cast led by Danielle de Niese and Alysha Umphress, this release coincides with worldwide #BernsteinAt100 celebrations marking the centenary of the Orchestra’s former President.

Composed in 1803, while Beethoven was also writing the ‘Eroica’ Symphony, Christ on the Mount of Olives (Christus am Ölberge) is the composer’s only oratorio and combines the emotive force of his 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 and also reflects the emotional pressure Beethoven was under at the time.

Sir Simon Rattle and the London Symphony Orchestra pay homage to Leonard Bernstein with a recording of Wonderful Town that captures the energy and excitement of sold-out performances from December 2017. Featuring an all-star cast led by Danielle de Niese and Alysha Umphress, this release coincides with worldwide #BernsteinAt100 celebrations marking the centenary of the Orchestra’s former President.

All of Strauss' symphonic poems tell a story, but in Ein Heldenleben the subject is his own life. Casting himself as the Hero, the hostile music critics as Adversaries, his compositions as Works of Peace, his Flight from the World as Consummation, the 34-year-old composer seems to succumb to unabashed egotism and grandiosity. However, his self-indulgence is redeemed by his music, which abounds with soaring, rapturous melodies, breath-taking modulations and gorgeous, scintillating orchestral colors. A solo violin represents the Hero's Companion, Strauss' beloved but famously difficult wife; their love scene contains some of his most ravishing, ecstatic music. Equally striking is his mordantly satirical depiction of the cacophonously bickering Adversaries, who rear their malicious heads even during moments of triumphant fulfillment. Toward the end, Strauss slyly tempts listeners to "Name that tune!" with almost 30 quotes from his own works.