Simon Rattle returns to Philly with his new orchestra

When Simon Rattle first conducted in Philadelphia more than three decades ago, he was a 38-year-old newbie who would go on to head up some of the world’s greatest ensembles — most notably, the Berlin Philharmonic and London Symphony Orchestra.

Rattle became a regular visitor to the Philadelphia Orchestra’s podium, and was pursued as its music director more than once. But on May 1, he returns with Munich’s Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra — whose leadership he assumed this season — in one of his specialities: Mahler’s Symphony No. 6.

We spoke with Rattle, now 69, about the changing orchestra world, his next appearance with the Philadelphia Orchestra, and Mahler’s “Tragic” Symphony — whose shattering blows near the end require special equipment and an extremely strong percussionist who Rattle hopes is “not working out some psychological trauma.”

This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.

I suppose we have to accept that the days of “build it and they will come” are over, as much as I enjoyed that. There is more and more to do with making orchestras a part of the communities and the cities that they are in, and part of the world around it. This is just simply more and more important, but also to the good because I think we’re all being stretched in directions that we otherwise might not be.

I think this is happening all over the globe now. Certainly everybody is searching for diversity in all the possible meanings of that word. And let’s face it, it’s about time. Whether the pendulum sometimes swings too fast, it’s hard to say, but we’ve all been doing a kind of fascinating catch-up. Since the lockdown time, it did feel like people have had a lot of time to kind of sit and think of what they can do, and how they can make this more powerful and how they can sell stories in other ways.

It’s interesting, because in middle Europe, there’s not the same struggle for audience. So in some ways we are able to experiment in further directions. In Munich, of course, the orchestra has had their Musica Viva [contemporary music] series for more than half a century.

But at the same time we are now able to explore backwards. We are building our own period instrument orchestra within the orchestra. Which will be I think the first time a major symphony orchestra has done that.

As you know, I was a quite reluctant guest conductor. Once I fell in love with an orchestra, I tended to stay there. Which is also why there was such a long relationship with Philadelphia. In Munich I resisted doing it, even though I’d always admired the orchestra. I had a life-changing experience with them, aged 16, when they came to Liverpool with [conductor Rafael] Kubelík. That seemed to me to be the first time I had ever seen an orchestra and conductor with that degree of symbiotic relationship. But in fact, it was my old much-missed friend [conductor Mariss] Jansons who persuaded me that I must visit and see what it was like.

I immediately felt at home. And I found, of course, what was a very different type of German orchestra than the German orchestra I was conducting [the Berlin Philharmonic]. Both magnificent but utterly different. Munich being a very warm and collaborative group. And from that moment on, I always worked with them, never thinking that I would be the boss, imagining that there were many more years of Mariss to go. I don’t think any of us understood at that time just how ill he was, what a miracle it was that he kept going for so long. I just presumed this would be a place I would go into a couple of weeks a year.

And so the position I find myself in now was a surprise.

I mean, look, it’s hard to say at the moment. We just began — this is our first season. So we’re really getting to know each other. They’re certainly a group that seems up for anything, all repertoire in all directions, educational projects in all kinds of ways. And they still keep this warm, unified, flexible feeling that conductors like Kubelík and Mariss instilled in them. We all are standing on the shoulders of our predecessors, just as Stokowski and Ormandy were so much the basis of Philadelphia. That’s something that you don’t escape and that’s actually wonderful.

I haven’t been to the States since ‘19. We just simply stayed closer to home. I’m delighted that there’s a plan to return to Philadelphia [to lead the Philadelphia Orchestra, not in 2024-25, but in some future season]. But I haven’t done any conducting in the States since that time. The world changed. And it seemed to make less sense for everybody to be flying around that way. But of course, I miss it. I remember the last time I conducted Philadelphia was just after the last strike [in 2016].

It really is. It doesn’t feel like it because it’s still very fresh in the memory. But with a young family, I just kept my guest conducting closer to home when I worked with the London Symphony, because they tour like … I don’t know what the adjective is. It’s like a group of huskies — they tour to survive. There wasn’t much space for anything else if I wanted even to recognize my family. So it’s not that I’ve fallen out of love with Philadelphia, it’s just life changed. But I will be back. And I really look forward to that. I’m sure I’ll still recognize some faces. I’ve had so many unforgettable experiences in Philadelphia. That’s been a very, very special relationship to have.

This is so funny, because we’re about to do it next week [the Munich concerts were in late April]. It’s the 75th birthday of the Symphonieorchester des Bayerischen Rundfunks, and so it comes back again. I think what I’m hoping is that we don’t have, as we did in Philadelphia, three tenors over four performances. That was quite a wall of death experience.

Oh, I hadn’t. What was extraordinary was to meet the soprano who had made that recording with Stokowski [Rose Bampton, in 1932]. She came to the first night. That was a thrill.

Well, strangely, I think it’s the chamber music aspect of it, the variety of colors, the listening rather than the sheer heft. It’s the gigantic string quartet quality of this orchestra that I treasure.

We have an extraordinary wooden machine that we carry around with us, and, I have to say, an extremely strong percussionist. I hope he’s not working out some psychological trauma by doing it, but it is unforgettable when he does it. It is maybe not the kind of question I can yet ask him. I do two [hammer blows]. The last time many years ago when I decided I would do three — and therefore also restored the orchestration for the third hammer blow, which [Mahler] changed completely — something very remarkable happened in the concert. The hammer player got lost and he did not play. And at that point, I started to become superstitious.

Since then, I thought OK, something in the universe is trying to tell me to do what the man asked. And I mean, similarly to do with the order of movements — do the “Andante” second, as he always did, and as he asked, as he even had the piece printed. So there we go.

I somehow wonder if there [could] be a way in which the hammer player could lift the hammer and not play it, and it makes some kind of emotional sense.

Because actually, that’s what it is. It’s the point that [the music] has become so weakened that the hammer blow isn’t necessary. Just the return to A minor is necessary. Because it still seems to me, after all these years, that A major nearly makes it — that it would actually be like the previous Mahler symphonies that finally the major key survived. It nearly gets there. What I find devastating about the piece is that it doesn’t.

If it was only something of tragedy and darkness, well, it would be a very different type of piece. But it has so much optimism and exuberance as well. That seems to be the key to the finale, that it must be a struggle between the two — not a fait accompli. Whatever the opinion polls say.

Simon Rattle and the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra perform in Verizon Hall, Broad and Spruce Streets, May 1 at 8 p.m. Tickets are $35-$139. emsembleartsphilly.org, 215-893-1999.