Page 22 - Final_CBSO's 100th Birthday Celebration

Fifth Symphony — which made an extraordinary impact in the middle of wartime — struck me
as something we need to hear now. It has this incredible strength and serenity: a feeling of ‘this

is what the world could be when we emerge from this’.”

That’s as may be, but the musical world is nowhere near emerging from turmoil yet. And the

LSO, apparently without even a hope of government support, somehow has to survive without

its normal box office and touring income. The loss of the latter, in particular, has been a hammer

blow. The orchestra has lost 11 overseas tours, 99 days of work, in five months.

“Actually that amount of touring is insane, and the LSO musicians will probably be happier and

healthier without it,” Rattle suggests. “Financially, though, it’s devastating for an orchestra that

has to rely on foreign earnings as much as we do. And we have to accept that, in future, long-
distance tours will be rarities, if they happen at all.”

Luckily, the LSO’s foresight over the past 20 years in building up its online educational work

and digital partnerships around the world is bringing in some much-needed income. “For

instance,” Rattle points out, “the first thing we do in St Luke’s next week — Bluebeard’s

Castle — is being streamed to Japan where we were due to perform it live. And because we had

such a wonderful residency in Chile last year, the Chileans have bought into all our online

educational work, which is being translated into Spanish.
“Kathryn [McDowell] has done a wonderful job of stacking up things like that and trying to

balance the books so the players can hang on, but survival is now a big struggle.

Characteristically, the LSO is not asking for a handout. We just need help to help ourselves.”

Something like an incentive scheme, so that when the orchestra launches its recovery appeal in

the autumn, the government matches or part-matches the amount it raises from its own private

donors? “Exactly,” Rattle says.

His own lockdown has been, he admits, “an extraordinary blessing”, since he has unexpectedly

spent so much time at home with his wife, the singer Magdalena Kozena, and their three

children. “My God, does having a garden suddenly seem like one of the greatest privileges of
our time,” he exclaims. “I was able to watch my five-year-old daughter learn to ride her bike. I

also improved my cooking to the extent that I can now ask the family, ‘Do you want Gordon

Ramsay or Ottolenghi tonight?’ And I finally read Beowulf [the epic Old English poem], which