Page 21 - Final_CBSO's 100th Birthday Celebration

una fantasia . . . that were written for distanced performers. And Tom Adès decided he would
write a new piece for us [called Dawn] that could also be played with great distances between

the players.”

An extra frisson is that Adès’s piece will mark the veteran pianist Mitsuko Uchida’s debut as an

orchestral musician. “She will have just played Beethoven’s Moonlight Sonata followed by the

Kurtag, and of course the hygiene rules mean that nobody else is allowed to touch the same
piano on the same day,” Rattle explains. So she is following in Mr Bean’s footsteps at the 2012

Olympics opening ceremony, and becoming an LSO player for one night only? “Yes, and she’s

excited about it as only Mitsuko can be,” Rattle says, laughing.

The main work in the LSO’s Prom, however, is Vaughan Williams’s Fifth Symphony,

premiered in 1943. And that is a complete surprise, because hitherto Rattle had never seemed
much of a Vaughan Williams fan, preferring the grittier end-of-the-20th century repertoire.

He says that is a misconception. “The Fifth Symphony was always close to my heart when I was
growing up,” he says. “I suppose, though, that when I went to the CBSO [he became principal

conductor of the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra in 1980 when he was 25] I had a

feeling that everyone played Vaughan Williams and we needed to explore new paths.

Rattle and the LSO rehearse at St Luke’s ahead of Sunday’s Prom
MATT ALEXANDER/PA
“I remember, though, Carlo Maria Giulini [the great Italian conductor] saying to me when I was

in my early twenties, ‘Simon, the music you need to play will come and find you at the right
time.’ That’s really true. Certain music is necessary at a certain time, and Vaughan Williams’s