Simon Rattle with Berlin PO: which performances are worth buying?

I like his Mahler 2nd & 9th with the BPO on Warner Classics, very well recorded.

I agree with the recommendation for Mahler's 2nd and 9th. There's also an excellent version of Mahler's 10th (the Deryck Cooke arrangement, of course, as Mahler never completed the work) with Rattle and the BPO.

Stephen

Try to hear his set of the complete Beethoven symphonies and complete Sibelius symphonies.  I think both are very well worth hearing, though some find the well-upholstered BPO sound too rich for the Sibelius (I don't).  I bought the CD sets of them both (expensive) but you do get a code to download them from the BPO website in 24/192 sound as well.  I also found his Schubert Symphony no.9 very rewarding.

All the conductors who have preceded Rattle on the podium of the Berliner are more interesting than him, even Abbado. Why buy his BP recordings? He was himself when still in Birmingham, a young enthusiast full of ideas. If one wants the Berliner, there's a much more important history of the orchestra on record, even a few gems by the late Sergiu Celibidache, who conducted it from 1945 to 1954, in more than 700 concerts, unfortunately not leaving almost any recording due to his refusal of the medium. If one was Rattle, well, there's a a flavor for all taste, I suppose.

Morton posted:

I like his Mahler 2nd & 9th with the BPO on Warner Classics, very well recorded.

Sorry, are we talking about music or about test discs?

Stephen_C posted:

I agree with the recommendation for Mahler's 2nd and 9th. There's also an excellent version of Mahler's 10th (the Deryck Cooke arrangement, of course, as Mahler never completed the work) with Rattle and the BPO.

Stephen

Rattle must have had a soft spot for completions. There is even his recording of Holst's The Planets to which he added a newly composed Pluto (which hadn't been discovered in Holst's days) and a series of extras of modern compositions of astronomical inspiration.

His main merit seems to have brought again the BPO to the level of discographic visibility and power that Abbado had somehow in part lost. The Berliner Philharmoniker deserved someone better, if I may dare.

Max_B posted:

The Berliner Philharmoniker deserved someone better, if I may dare.

Do you think Petreko is any better than Rattle?

Kuma,

I have subscribed for two years to the Berliner Philharmoniker's Digital Concert Hall, watching on my big TV all I could  among a catalogue of their last 300 live concerts or so. I have then been able to hear (and see) Rattle a number of times; I heard Petrenko just once. A comparison is impossible, safe that I can't imagine two more different approaches. If you allow me a daring comparison, it would be between the evolution of Naim and that of the BPO: from a proud and idiosyncratic self-sufficiency, indifferent to fashions and meant to set the pace, to a more complacent wish to satisfy a larger audience and assure a steady market of music. There was the BPO of Bülow, Nikisch, Fürtwängler, Celibidache; now there is visibility and the conservation of a tradition often too big to bear with ease. I don't think Petrenko will be better or worse than Rattle: he's intense, humble, very musical and evidently technically adequate; he will be different.

If we had asked any of the conductors I mentioned earlier on, any of them (including the Romanian Celibidache, self-declared ideally Japanese or ideally German, depending on the moment [but I once heard him say, to a group of students from my country that included myself, we Italians]) would have replied that the BPO could not have been conducted but by a German; during Karajan's Reign, everything changed: the orchestra moved from a philosophical world to a commercial one. Since then, all is possible, and so all will be.

Best

Massimo

Thanks for your reply Max.

I have not heard any of Petrenko's work but I agree that Rattle has done a lot of good for Berliner in terms of exposure and a lot of recording legacy. I am not sure in Germany but in the US, since the orchestra is not funded by the State, one of the most important job for any dirigent is to raise money for the orchestra. Quite often it requires schmoozing with well-to-do in town.

Rattle is marvelous at that. Rattle/BPO performance is always a bit short of my expectation but they always maintain a high standard.

As this seems to be turning into a Rattle thread as much as a Rattle/BPO thread I can't resist saying how pleased I am that Sir Simon is returning to be principal conductor of the London symphony orchestra. I've already heard them with him performing Mahler 6, am going to "Das Lied von der Erde" before Christmas and to Mahler's 9th (my "desert island record"!) next April.

I like the combination of Rattle and Mahler!

Stephen

Thanks all,

Massimo, I have sympathy with your views in general - I’d sort of pre-decided that Rattle/BPO wasn’t an abvious must have combination as such, but his Planets IMO is very good artistically and exceptional sonically even for a piece where the catalogue is bristling with great performances. Agree Pluto is a nonsense, but I can happily skip that and it doesn’t detract from a fine version of the Holst originals for me. That’s the work that prompted my thread to see if other works by them were worth investigating. 

Cheers, Kevin