The conductor and composer talk Beethoven, Brexit and bunking off boasts day ahead of a brand-new Barbican/ LSO season that will celebrate Ades’s 50 th birthday
One titan in the chamber can be difficult. A duet threatens to be a crush. Serious music has many virtuosoes. Yet true-life creative thinkers, who mould the culture countryside, are a different species: rare, sought after, elusive by nature or necessary. After months of planning, on the eve of announcing a new season, the Barbican Centre has cajoled two such to spend time together on a morning last week, in gossip for the Observer. Both are British but with world-wide statures. Each had a central role to play in next year’s programming. Getting a pope and director together could hardly require more thorough preparation.
Simon Rattle arrives instantly. Time-keeping, in every sense, is a conductor’s reason for existing. We’re in “his” light-green apartment backstage at the Barbican, residence of the London Symphony Orchestra, of which he is music director. He made up the announce in 2017, after 16 years at the helm of the Berlin Philharmonic, generally reckoned the best orchestra in the world countries. You can argue over this meaningless term, but it gives you an idea of Rattle’s status. His is one of the few instant recognisable faces, and words, in his study. He takes a low-key view of superstardom: blue-blooded woolly jumper, gray-haired woolly hair, steering his wheelie suitcase in one entrust, a takeaway chocolate in the other. Always enlivened, heavy-browed sees intense, today he seems more than generally roused. He has news.
Read more: theguardian.com
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