Sir Simon Rattle to quit Berlin in 2018…
Gramophone reports that Sir Simon Rattle will not renew his contract with the Berlin Philharmonic when it expires in 2018. By then he will have been with the orchestra for 16 years, and yet nobody – to paraphrase Carlos Kleiber – seems to have been very rattled by Simon.
Five years of guessing games begin, then. The obvious money will probably be on Christian Thielemann. Yet Daniel Barenboim will only be 75… Where Rattle himself will end up is anybody’s guess, if indeed he takes on a permanent position.
UPDATED: Lebrecht has his usual four-penneth worth here, and Entartete Musik takes a rightly more favourable view here. I think Rattle has achieved far more with this orchestra than his detractors allow, particularly when it comes to twentieth century repertoire and programming choices. But in the heavy-hitting canon, especially in Mozart, Beethoven, Brahms, and Bruckner, he has been much less convincing.
“Where Rattle himself will end up is anybody’s guess, if indeed he takes on a permanent position”
I sincerely hope Peter Gelb calls him and gives him the top cinducting job at the Met.