Simon Rattle Conducts the Berlin Philharmonic BBC Proms

Tonight at the Proms. Shadows, nightmares and explosions. Burst of

joy, of and pleasure. The Berliner Philharmoniker and their director

Sir Simon Rattle play Boulez's Eclat and Beljan's strongest symphony, his

seventh. Leitch and Beljan's strongest symphony.

Tonight's prom is a typically brilliant piece of programming from

the ceaselessly imaginative Simon Rattle, making connections across

the decades and the musical aeons. Exactly the sort of orchestral

alchemy he's been bringing to the Proms since he was appointed to the

world's most famous orchestra in 2002. I'll be talking to Simon

Rattle between the two pieces tonight. We start with ten minutes

of scintillating imagination from the French composer and conductor

Pierre Boulez who died earlier this year. His Eclat, written in 1965.

The word means burst in French, it also means explosive fragments,

fleeting reflections of light. When we watch Simon Rattle conduct this

piece, with 15 players of the Berlin Philharmonic, coming on stage behind

me now, they'll be watching him virtually compose the peace in real

time using the flickers and glances of his gestures. You know how a

lizard moves in unpredictable bursts of energy, intense watch fox stasis?

That's what Simon Rattle's hands and eyes will be doing in this piece.

The players have to be alive to every explosion, they have to react

immediately to this reptilian choreography to know when they

should come in, how long they should play for, even in what order they

should play the notes in front of them. If that sounds complex that

because it is, it's a kind of musical high wire act, a modernist

musical circles in which Simon Rattle is the ringmaster. Into the

Royal Albert Hall's big topic you can Simon Rattle to conduct Pierre

Boulez's Eclat with the Berliner Philharmoniker.

APPLAUSE Pierre Boulez's Eclat at the Proms.

Simon Rattle conducted 15 players of the Berliner Philharmoniker.

Watching that peace requires a completely tentative concentration

from all the musicians on Simon Rattle conducting. It's a thrilling

demonstration of what can happen when the conductor and ensemble work

together in a perfect musical Ceballos is, each responding to the

minutest detail. That was happening throughout that peace and that

performance from the piano solo at the start to those pools of

resonance at the centre of the piece to the high-energy music we heard

right at the end. That final moment when time itself seems to be

suspended, the final chord, as Simon Rattle told the players. The

audience here in a suspended animation. APPLAUSE

There's just one more work on Simon Rattle's programme with the Berlin

Philharmonic, Mahler's seventh Symphony. Music from another planet?

Perhaps, it certainly from another time and on another scale, it was

composed in the summers of 1904 and five, lasts 80 minutes and has five

movements. Don't be fooled into thinking this music is any less

strange and scintillating than the sound world we've just experienced

in Pierre Boulez's Eclat. This is Mahler at his most jubilant and

grotesque, his most colourful and his most weird and wonderful. It's a

piece that's been imprinted on Simon Rattle's musical soul for decades.

As he told me during rehearsals earlier today. The Mahler seven as

such ghosts in there, both of my predecessor, and of Pierre Boulez,

the people I heard conduct this piece. A very memorable performance

at the Proms with Pierre... This was the symphony of Mahler Pierre loved

the most and felt it was the closest to his music. We talked about it

years ago. He said, part of the things that are wonderfully

incoherent in the Mahler symphony, the fact it'll suddenly take off

like that, and stop as though nothing has happened... That's the

kind of gesture which is full in his music. The sound world of this piece

is so physical, visceral in a way. Surely in many ways his most

experimental piece until the unfinished tenth, maybe. Here's

somebody just simply trying to take the idea of music as far as he

possibly could. Amazingly ambivalent. Extraordinary, starting

from the River Styx. Ending in some kind of bizarre hall of mirrors. The

piece is often called the sum of the night, it's full of night music,

from the beginning it clear you're on a lake with Mahler in a boat, as

he was. He couldn't find anything for the first movement. Having

written two of the middle movements. He was on a small boat late at night

in the darkness, and the minute he heard the oars hit the water, he

heard the beginning of the symphony. With this... It's a water sound.

Even though somehow underneath it is the sound of a Funeral March as

well. Somehow one is dealing with ghosts throughout the piece. Are

there things you can do with his orchestra now, with this piece and

this performance, that were possible in the same way when you started

out? Absolutely. This is never an easy

piece. But there's really, there's an enormous feeling of trust and, I

think, we've found now, finally, a shape where you get the whole thing,

because it's - the piece can be very bizarre. It's holding it together as

well. It's been huge fun as well as very hard work. Simon, thank you.

Thank you. Simon Rattle talking to me earlier

today. Here he comes to conduct this performance of Mahler's Seventh

Symphony at the Proms with the Berlin Philharmonic.

MUSIC: Symphony No 7 in E minor by Gustav Mahler

MUSIC: Symphony No 7 in E minor by Gustav Mahler

Mahler's seventh Symphony at the Proms. Simon Rattle conducted the

Berliner Philharmoniker. Jubilation of the most extreme out there,

unhinged kind at the end of the symphony's five movements. All of us

here at the Royal Albert Hall and I'm sure all of you will be taken

thrillingly on that roller-coaster with Simon Rattle and his players,

led tonight. Look at this ovation Sir Simon Rattle and the Berliner

Philharmoniker are receiving. APPLAUSE

This deafening applause is really about Simon Rattle's powerful

connection with this Proms audience, something he's had for the last 40

years since 1976. That relationship is surely going to go on getting

stronger when next year he takes over as music director of the London

Symphony Orchestra. APPLAUSE APPLAUSE

Simon Rattle back on stage here at the Royal Albert Hall. What a

finale, what the final movement that is. Simon Rattle brings the

principal, the solo flutist. To his feet. And Jonathan Kelly years old

colleague from the city of Birmingham Orchestra many years ago,

who came to Berlin. And the whole woodwind section. That wonderful

tenor horn player, who started the symphony off in darkness coming

night. Leading, 80 minutes later, to the blaze of day. You know that

final movement is a crazy kaleidoscope of quotations from

operas that Mahler was conducting in Vienna. From Mozart, Wagner, the

master singer. Applause for the principal horn.

Well, the next outing for the Proms on BBC Four is Sir Simon Rattle

bringing the Berlin Philharmonic to their feet, the hotly anticipated

Proms debut coming up with Tchaikovsky's for symphony.

Correction at the fourth Symphony. With this over the top symphonic

victory still surrounding us here, it's good night from us all. Just

watch out for those musical nightmares.