Rattle

EMI Classics releases an exciting new recording of Rachmaninov’s Symphonic Dances and The Bells. These two Rachmaninov masterpieces, performed by one of the world’s most renowned orchestras under their celebrated principal conductor Sir Simon Rattle. This is a rare chance to hear Sir Simon’s interpretations of these great works. Towards the end of his life, the composer himself said of The Bells “I worked on this composition with feverish ardour; and it remains of all my works the one I love the most”. Of the Symphonic Dances, written shortly before his death, he said “I don’t know how it happened, it must have been my last spark”.

These extraordinary performances were recorded live at the Herodes Atticus Odeon in Athens in 2004 and offer the first musical encounter between Daniel Barenboim and Simon Rattle. One-time rivals for the post of principal conductor of the Berlin Philharmonic, they here unite, happy to pay tribute to each other in a performance of Brahms’s First Piano Concerto of an epic grandeur and raw emotional intensity. Barenboim, pianist, conductor and political activist, has clearly reached the pinnacle of a dazzling career (a prophecy of his recent London performances of the complete Beethoven sonatas and concertos) that has ranged from prodigy to the fullest maturity. Caught on this form, few musicians can approach him in stature. Rattle launches the opening tutti with an explosive force, and after an oddly stiff and self-conscious entry (music that Tovey claimed as equal to anything in Bach’s St Matthew Passion) he quickly declares his true status, playing with a dark eloquence and with a breadth and range of inflection that allows him to savour every detail. Rarely can the first movement’s coda have emerged with such frenzied emotion, and here in particularly both Barenboim and Rattle combine to sound like King Lear raging against the universe (“Blow winds and crack your cheeks…”). The second movement, Brahms’s response to Schumann’s attempted suicide, is weighted with an almost unbearable significance and intensity, and in the finale Wolf’s strange dictum, “Brahms cannot exult”, is turned topsy-turvy.

Krystian Zimerman, Sir Simon Rattle and the London Symphony Orchestra present Ludwig van Beethoven's 5 piano concertos. The exceptional Polish pianist Krystian Zimerman, together with Leonard Bernstein, presented an outstanding reference recording of Beethoven's Piano Concertos Nos 3, 4 and 5 more than 30 years ago (1989). At the time, both agreed on their commitment to music - in mind, heart and soul - which led to an extraordinary recording. Unfortunately, Bernstein died before the cycle was completed.

Sir Simon Rattle - Leaving Home - 1 - Dancing on a Volcano
DVDRip | XviD | 615 MB | 51 minutes | 640x480 | MP3 192 kb/s | 2005 | Label: Arthaus Musik | English

[…] a series of seven programs that Sir Simon Rattle made for television in the 1990s. Leaving Home is an historical journey through the radical changes in music that coincided with the tremendous social, technological and political upheaval that was the twentieth century. Artfully scripted, and with excellent musical examples, these fifty-minute programs integrate history (by means of some nicely chosen archival film footage), lecture (with Sir Simon speaking and illustrating from the keyboard) and performance, (with Sir Simon on the podium.)

Kevin Sutton

It is no surprise that Sir Simon would one day tackle this most comprehensive of Bach’s compositions in view of his much applauded interpretation of the St. John Passion in 2006. The Berliner Morgenpost wrote at the time: “A performance of this musical calibre renders superfluous all questions about authenticity and historical performance practice. At the Philharmonie Sir Simon Rattle and his orchestra performed the St. John Passion […] with highly concentrated and flawless beauty devoid of any distorting indulgence.”