Conductor Simon Rattle makes a long-awaited return to Chicago

While Sir Simon Rattle ranks among the most recognized British conductors in the world, his life has been centered on Germany since 2002, when he took over as chief conductor of the famed Berlin Philharmonic.

Even when he served as music director of the London Symphony Orchestra from 2017 to 2023, he commuted from Berlin, and now his professional focus is back in as Germany as chief conductor of the Symphonieorchester des Bayerischen Rundfunks (Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra, or BRSO) in Munich.  

“That begs the question, ‘Why don’t I speak German better?’ But there we are,” he said with a chuckle.

Rattle and his new orchestra, where he took the helm at the beginning of 2023–24 season, will have something of a coming out in the United States, when they undertake a tour that will take them to four major venues, including Carnegie Hall in New York and the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C.

The itinerary will begin April 28, when they perform Gustav Mahler’s Symphony No. 6 as part of the Symphony Center Presents Orchestras series. It will be Rattle’s first appearance in the hall since 2009, when he visited with the Berlin Philharmonic.

“That’s quite a place to do a first concert,” the conductor said. “We’re still all very in awe of Chicago, let’s face it. When I saw it on the schedule, I could see completely how it made touring sense, but we all gulped a little bit.”

“That’s quite a place to do a first concert,” the conductor said. “We’re still all very in awe of Chicago, let’s face it. When I saw it on the schedule, I could see completely how it made touring sense, but we all gulped a little bit.”

The tour will be the orchestra’s first in the United States since November 2019 when former Chief Conductor Mariss Jansons led the first of two concerts in New York before having to withdraw from the second because of a worsening heart condition. He died just a few weeks later at age 76. “So, this also will be very emotional for them,” Rattle said of this return visit.

Although such activities were inevitably suspended during the pandemic, the orchestra has regularly toured in Europe and traveled to more distant cities in Asia and North America. “For an orchestra, it is a completely vital — performing in different places, getting to know each other better, smelling another atmosphere,” Rattle said. “By the end of a tour, an orchestra is always a different creature.” 

A native of Liverpool, Rattle, 69, gained international fame as first principal conductor and later music director of the City of Birmingham (England) Symphony Orchestra in 1980–98, taking the regional ensemble to unprecedented heights with an extraordinary synchrony between him and his musicians. His success there led to his being named in 1999 to the much-coveted position of principal conductor of the Berlin Philharmonic, beginning his duties three years later.

Rattle did little guest conducting during his Berlin tenure, but he was good friends with Jansons, who talked him into taking a turn in 2010 with the Bavarian Radio Symphony, a highly respected orchestra that is marking its 75th anniversary.  

“I became over the years very close to Mariss Jansons,” Rattle said. “This was one of the colleagues whom I would most want to spend time with. And he was just always very persuasive. I resisted guest conducting almost anywhere for years, and finally, I thought, ‘This I must try.’ Really, I loved it from the word, ‘Go.’”

He quickly discovered how different Munich, the capital of the Bavarian region of Germany, is from Berlin. “I presumed that all German orchestras would be like the Berlin Philharmonic,” he said. “It’s like saying that all American cities must be like New York. It’s not like that.”

He guest conducted there a week or two every season thereafter, but he never gave any thought to having a permanent post with the orchestra. But everything changed with Jansons’ death in 2019. “Like everybody else,” Rattle said, “I presumed there would be many more years of Mariss. I don’t think anyone understood how sick he was.”

Orchestra officials reached out to him about the possibility of taking over as chief conductor, but Rattle was committed to the London Symphony, where he had been music director since 2017, and the idea seemed impossible. But when the COVID-19 pandemic hit, he reassessed his priorities and decided he wanted to spend more time with his family and less time commuting. So, he agreed to the Bavarian post in 2021, assuming his duties last fall. “The idea of working with an orchestra that I loved so much, which was close and which was not endlessly peripatetic was a very cool concept,” he said.

It also helped that Rattle had had a life-changing experience with the Bavarian Radio Symphony when he was just 16. Then-Chief Conductor Rafael Kubelik (who served as music director of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra in 1950–53) and the orchestra came on tour to his hometown, and they performed Beethoven’s iconic Ninth Symphony. “It was the first time I had seen that kind of symbiotic relationship between a conductor and orchestra,” Rattle said. “And the way in which it was, and the warmth and understanding with which they all played and treated each other, I hadn’t quite realized that was possible in that sense.”

When he came to conduct the Bavarian Radio Symphony in 2010, the maestro told the story of that formative experience, and there were still three members of the orchestra who had been present for that concert in Liverpool.

Rattle still senses the lingering influence of Kubelik on the orchestra. “You still feel that there now,” he said. “It’s so interesting that great orchestras so much reflect the powerful personalities that have made them.”

For their appearance at Symphony Center, Rattle and the Bavarian Radio Symphony will perform Mahler’s Sixth Symphony, a 1903–04 work he conducted often and one for which he feels a particular affinity. He led the 80-minute work in his first engagement with the Berlin Philharmonic in 1987, and he returned to it for his final concert as a chief conductor in June 2018.

“It’s a piece I really wanted to hear this orchestra play,” he said of the Bavarian Radio Symphony, “because they have so much refinement as well as strength, so there are really many possibilities of the journeys you can take in a piece like that.”