London Symphony Orchestra, Sir Simon Rattle feat. Magdalena Kožená, Andrew Staples, Florian Boesch, Ross Ramgobin, Alessandro Fisher
Biography London Symphony Orchestra, Sir Simon Rattle feat. Magdalena Kožená, Andrew Staples, Florian Boesch, Ross Ramgobin, Alessandro Fisher
The London Symphony Orchestra
is widely regarded as one of the world’s leading orchestras. Since its formation in 1904, it has always attracted excellent players from all over the world, many of whom have flourishing solo, chamber music and teaching careers alongside their orchestral work. The LSO’s roster of soloists and conductors is second to none.
The LSO is proud to be Resident Orchestra at the Barbican in the City of London, presenting over 70 concerts a year to its London audiences, and a further 70 concerts abroad on tour, and has thrived on the stability its permanent home has offered since 1982. In addition, the Orchestra has a successful annual residency at Lincoln Centre, New York, and is the international resident orchestra of La Salle Pleyel in Paris, also appearing regularly in Japan and the Far East, as well as in all the major European cities.
The LSO is set apart from other international orchestras by the depth of its commitment to music education, reaching over 60,000 people each year. The award-winning programme enables the LSO to offer people of all ages an opportunity to get involved in music-making and to enter the extraordinary soundworld of the Orchestra. As well as ongoing programmes that engage participants locally, nationally and internationally, through family concerts, Discovery Days and several thriving community groups, recent innovations include LSO On Track, a long-term investment in young musicians in East London, and Centre for Orchestra, a unique collaboration with the Guildhall School and the Barbican Centre focusing on orchestral training, research and professional development of orchestral musicians.
Sir Simon Rattle
was born in Liverpool and studied at the Royal Academy of Music.
From 1980 to 1998, Simon Rattle was Principal Conductor and Artistic Adviser of the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra and was appointed Music Director in 1990. In 2002 he took up the position of Artistic Director and Chief Conductor of the Berlin Philharmonic, where he will remain until 2018. From September 2017 he will be Music Director of the London Symphony Orchestra.
Simon Rattle has made over 70 recordings for EMI record label (now Warner Classics), and has received numerous prestigious international awards for his recordings on various labels. Releases on EMI include Stravinsky’s Symphony of Psalms (which received the 2009 Grammy Award for Best Choral Performance), Berlioz’s Symphonie fantastique, Ravel’s L’enfant et les sortilèges, Tchaikovsky’s The Nutcracker, Mahler’s Symphony No 2 and Stravinsky’s The Rite of Spring. In August 2013 Warner Classics released Rachmaninov’s The Bells and Symphonic Dances, all recorded with the Berlin Philharmonic. Rattle’s most recent releases (the Beethoven and Sibelius symphonies, Bach Passions and Schumann symphonies) have been for Berliner Philharmoniker Recordings—the orchestra’s new in-house label, established in early 2014.
As well as fulfilling a taxing concert schedule in Berlin, Rattle and the Berlin Philharmonic regularly tour within Europe, North America and Asia. The partnership has also broken new ground with the education programme Zukunft@Bphil, earning the Comenius Prize in 2004, the Schiller Special Prize from the city of Mannheim in May 2005, the Golden Camera and the Urania Medal in Spring 2007. He and the Berlin Philharmonic were also appointed International UNICEF Ambassadors in the same year—the first time this honour has been conferred on an artistic ensemble.
In 2013, Simon and the Berlin Philharmonic took up a residency at the Baden-Baden Osterfestspiele performing Die Zauberflöte and a series of concerts. Past seasons have included Puccini’s Manon Lescaut and Peter Sellars’s ritualisation of Bach’s St John Passion, Strauss’s Der Rosenkavalier, Berlioz’s La damnation de Faust, and Wagner’s Tristan und Isolde. For the Salzburg Osterfestspiele Rattle conducted staged productions of Fidelio, Così fan tutte, Peter Grimes, Pelléas et Mélisande, Salome, and Carmen, a concert performance of Idomeneo and many contrasting concert programmes, all with the Berlin Philharmonic. He also conducted Wagner's complete 'Ring' cycle with the Berlin Philharmonic for the Aix-en-Provence Festival and Salzburg Osterfestspiele and most recently at the Deutsche Oper, Berlin and the Wiener Staatsoper. Other recent productions include Pelléas et Mélisande and Les Dialogues des Carmélites for the Royal Opera House; L'Étoile, Aus einem Totenhaus and Káťa Kabanová for the Deutsche Staatsoper Berlin; and Tristan und Isolde at the Metropolitan Opera, New York.
Simon Rattle has strong, long-standing relationships with the leading orchestras in London, Europe and the US, initially working closely with the Los Angeles Philharmonic Orchestra and Boston Symphony Orchestras, and more recently with the Philadelphia Orchestra. He regularly conducts the Vienna Philharmonic, with which he has recorded the complete Beethoven symphonies and piano concertos (with Alfred Brendel), and he is also a Principal Artist of the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment and Founding Patron of Birmingham Contemporary Music Group. During 2016/17, Simon Rattle opened the season at the Metropolitan Opera with Wagner’s Tristan und Isolde, returned to the Philadelphia Orchestra, Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra and Staatsoper Berlin, as well as undertaking an extensive tour of the US with the Berlin Philharmonic.
Simon Rattle was knighted in 1994 and in the New Year’s Honours of 2014 he received the Order of Merit from Her Majesty the Queen.
