What do most people do for their 70th birthday celebration? Dinner with the family? A party with friends? Exotic Holiday? One of the great champions of British music, and certainly one of the most influential conductors of our times may well have done all of those things, but more importantly, he did what he does best: putting on orchestral concerts with bold programmes featuring British music, including two striking British world premieres in London and Birmingham.
Simon Rattle has never been afraid to be outspoken, challenge the status quo or take risks. Now, as conductor emeritus of the London Symphony Orchestra, he has all the resources at his fingertips to do just that.
His recent birthday concerts featured new compositions written for the occasion by George Benjamin and Mark-Anthony Turnage. Benjamin’s new Interludes and Aria is based on his opera Lessons in Love and Violence which explores the painful emotional life of Edward II.
By contrast, Sco was a new five-movement guitar concerto by Turnage written for his longstanding collaborator, the American jazz improviser John Scofield. Also included was Tippett’s Ritual Dances from The Midsummer Marriage and the fifth symphony by Ralph Vaughan Williams.
In May, Rattle is to receive the 2025 Ernst von Siemens Music Prize ‘in recognition of his lifetime dedication to music’. Worth €250,000, the Prize will be presented at a special ceremony on 17 May 2025 in the Herkules hall of the Munich Residence, featuring an address by bass-baritone Sir Willard White.
Photo credit: Monika Rittershaus – Pressestelle der Stiftung Berliner Philharmoniker