Sir Simon Rattle

Born in Liverpool in 1955, Simon Rattle studied piano, percussion, and orchestral conducting at the Royal Academy of Music in London. In 1980, he began his close collaboration with the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra, which he led as Music Director from 1990 to 1998 and shaped into a top international ensemble. He joined the Berliner Philharmoniker as Chief Conductor in 2002 and expanded their repertoire during his 16-year tenure by integrating new music and staged performances, as well as Baroque works and music-historical rarities. His Berlin education program has received several awards, including the Comenius Award and the Schiller Prize of the City of Mannheim. Rattle then spent six years as Music Director of the London Symphony Orchestra, with which he now continues to collaborate as Conductor Emeritus. Sir Simon has been at the helm of the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra as Chief Conductor since 2023; at the start of the 2024-25 season, he will also take up a partnership with the Czech Philharmonic as Principal Guest Conductor. He also enjoys a close association with the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment as Principal Artist and he is Founding Patron of the Birmingham Contemporary Music Group. Rattle made his debut as an opera conductor at the Glyndebourne Festival in 1977. Additional engagements have taken him to the Opéra national de Paris, the Royal Opera House in London, Amsterdam National Opera, the Vienna State Opera, the Metropolitan Opera in New York, and the Festival d’Aix-en-Provence. He regularly works with the Staatsoper Berlin, where he will conduct a new production of Janáček’s The Excursions of Mr. Brouček in the spring of 2025. In 1994, Simon Rattle was raised to the peerage as Knight Bachelor by Queen Elizabeth II; he holds the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany and is a Knight of the French Legion of Honor. He received the Léonie Sonning Music Prize in 2013 and the Freedom of the City of London in 2018.

Lucerne Festival (IMF) debut on 8 September 1996 with the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra in a program of works by Berlioz, Beethoven, Tippett, and Haydn.

July 2024