Deseret News | Berlin Philharmonic reaching out

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Berlin Philharmonic reaching out

Conductor Rattle bringing hallmark sound to U.S.

By David McHugh
Associated Press

Published: Sunday, July 15, 2007 12:33 a.m. MDT

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AP: How has the orchestra changed during five years under Simon Rattle?

Rattle: I think you should ask other people than me. ... I would say that the first five years, at least, are always a transition. You can hear that, and — if you are listening to recordings — you can hear the orchestra gradually change, around year eight, nine, 10 of Karajan. And in the first years he's still dealing with (predecessor Wilhelm) Furtwaengler and the Furtwaengler style. These things move very very slowly. It's not like tectonic plates, but it's up there.

AP: What is your relationship like with an orchestra that is this good and may have their own ideas?

Rattle: Nobody said, when I took this job, "Oh, this is going to be an easy one." Actually you don't come into this for "easy." Of course they're difficult. Of course they're temperamental. Of course, they have many many ideas, but thank God they have many ideas because many of them are wonderful. We work very much together as a team, and we are all bouncing ideas off of each other. And there's really the possibility of improvising in performances.

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AP: You've stressed the need for outreach and more music in the schools. Where is the future audience for classical music going to come from?

Rattle: Look, I just think — everybody should have the possibility to have this in their life. And to have this it needs teaching and it needs evangelism. People just need to be touched by this. But so often it's one of the first things to be cut in schools.

We had an enormous fight in England to make sure music was one of the things that was kept in the curriculum. Because we had looked over at the United States and at what had happened at the public school system, which is that there's little or none left, and we thought that this must not happen.

People have been writing about the death of classical music for some time. But it doesn't seem to be happening. It's going to be delivered and found probably in very different ways, but I think as the new technologies take hold there'll be even another burst of classical music.

To tour Asia is really to be humbled. You know that there are more people learning the piano in China than the population of Germany — 90 million people are learning the piano. There are going to be some Lang Langs. Maybe a lot of the future will be there. What's happening in Venezuela, where there's a quarter of a million people playing in youth orchestras, more than do organized sports. It's a real inspiration to all of us. Maybe the future will be in those places.