Among the leading conductors of our time, Sir Simon Rattle holds a unique place. His achievements defy brief summary: from 1980 to 1998, he was Music Director of the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra, from 2002 to 2018, he was Chief Conductor of the Berliner Philharmoniker, and from 2017 to 2023, he held the post of Music Director of the London Symphony Orchestra.
In Warsaw, he will lead the renowned Mahler Chamber Orchestra, an international ensemble founded in 1997 at the initiative of Claudio Abbado and comprising outstanding musicians from more than 25 countries. The orchestra has no permanent home and collaborates with leading conductors and soloists worldwide. The eponymous L'Eroe (‘Hero’) of Ludwig van Beethoven's Third Symphony is not a particular individual but an idea. The music embodies the universal ideals of goodness and self-sacrifice, which also recur in the ballet The Creatures of Prometheus (whose theme is quoted in the finale of the ‘Eroica’), the opera Fidelio, and the Ninth Symphony. The work abounds in innovations, but what astonished Beethoven's contemporaries most was the sheer monumentality of its conception and the power of its musical expression: grandeur, passion and dramatic contrasts.
The serenade, a genre forgotten during much of the nineteenth century, was revived above all by the two works composed by the young Johannes Brahms, which inspired Antonín Dvořák. His Serenade for Strings, Op. 22, is a five-movement work sparkling with joy and wit, its elegant classicising form infused with Romantic expression. The slightly later Serenade in E minor, Op. 44, is scored for colourful winds with string fondamento. Its opening, pompous march could almost be taken for a funeral march, but at the faster tempo prescribed here it takes on a gently grotesque character, while the playful mood emerges in the movements that follow, drawing on the rhythms of Czech dances.
Sir Simon Rattle’s programme reflects the repertoire closest to his heart, from the Viennese Classics to Romanticism, bringing together works he has long performed and recorded, each bearing his distinctive personal stamp.
Piotr Maculewicz