Sir Simon Rattle’s mighty band delivers the goods

The much anticipated tour by Sir Simon Rattle and the London Symphony Orchestra lived up to its hype – and then some …

The London Symphony Orchestra concert at Sydney Opera House being watched by crowds on the forecourt. Picture: Katje Ford

• Titan launch for the new season
• Surprises a’plenty at Simone’s party
• Russian maestro gets up close and personal
• So long, Kronos, it’s been good to know you

It has been more than a decade since Sydney concertgoers have been able to enjoy a performance by an international orchestra other than our own blue riband Australian World Orchestra, so Sir Simon Rattle’s three-concert tour with the London Symphony has been eagerly anticipated.

With two concerts in and one to go, punters have not been disappointed, enjoying works on the grand scale played with dazzling skill and artistry by the LSO under their charismatic chief conductor, who is shortly to leave them for a stint in Munich with the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra.

Rattle was last here in 2015 to conduct the AWO in a performance of Bruckner’s Eighth Symphony, and he finished this current tour with the Seventh, following on from a superlative performance of Mahler’s Seventh on Tuesday and the opening concert’s program of Debussy and Ravel alongside US composer John Adams’ massive postminimalist work, Harmonielehrer (Study of Harmony).

Before that the Liverpudlian Rattle, now a German citizen, led arguably the world’s top orchestra the Berlin Philharmonic on its 2010 Australian tour.

Sir Simon Rattle conducting the London Symphony Orchestra at Sydney Opera House. Picture: Jay Patel

Monday night’s concert got off to a thrilling start with the Adams work, a 40-minute orchestral showpiece over three movements and requiring massive forces, including a percussion section which resembled a Bunnings Warehouse hardware department.

Adams, a friend of Rattle’s, combines the repetitive figures and motoric rhythms of minimalism with the broad romantic brushstrokes of a Mahler or Sibelius. The resulting impression was that of a massive machine driving to a glorious wild climax, its complex parts gathered together by Rattle’s dynamic energy. Blazing brass, manic bowing and thunderous percussion brought this seldom heard piece to its end and a roaring ovation.

Two impressionist masterpieces in Claude Debussy’s La Mer and Maurice Ravel’s Daphnis and Chloe Suite No 2, with the LSO joined by the Sydney Philharmonia Choirs, followed in the second half. Here Rattle’s painterly eye and grasp of poetry, structure and dynamic were evident. The glorious tone of Gareth Davies’s flute and the woodwinds, with the burnished quality of the brass players, was a highlight. The choir’s wordless chorus behind the Bacchanale section of Ravel’s ballet suite brought the concert to a vibrant close.

“Should we have some more music?” Rattle asked the audience, and after the cheers he added: “That was the correct response!”

More glorious flute and Juliana Koch’s oboe featured in Frederick Delius’s Interlude from Fennimore and Gerda and a second encore, the Last Fugue from the Young Person’s Guide to the Orchestra, brought the night to a rollicking end with the musicians decked out in streamers thrown from the front stalls and stage-side circle seats.

Mahler’s Seventh Symphony made for a truly memorable second concert, with Rattle conducting from memory and living every note through arm gestures, grimaces, smiles, puffed cheeks and popping eyes. It was as if every note was being wrought from his body, his trademark white curly hair shaking. Not for him the old-fashioned image of the conductor, one hand in his waistcoat pocket, the other flicking the baton!

While the audience inside the concert hall paid top dollar to enjoy its wonderful new acoustic, for $10 punters could brave the cool autumn evening and watch on a big screen from the Opera House forecourt.

After the Mahler, with its 80 action-packed minutes and extraordinary gallimaufry of instruments – including cowbells, a mandolin, guitar and tenorhorn – both audiences enjoyed two contrasting encores in Gabriel Faure’s delicious Pavane and one of Antonin Dvorak’s Slavonic Dances – “wild music in C major” as Rattle described it.

Ever the great communicator, Rattle made a little piece of satirical theatre of an errant ringing mobile phone, and discouraged applause after the first of five movements with some wit: “This is a symphony of the night – can we keep it dark and cloudy until the end? Then you’re welcome to give four times the applause!” he told the audience.

And they did.

DETAILS

• CONCERT LSO with Sir Simon Rattle Concerts 1 and 2

• WHERE Opera House Concert Hall

• WHEN Monday, May 1, and Tuesday, May 2