Page 61 - Final_CBSO's 100th Birthday Celebration

Leicester-born and Birmingham-raised sitar player Roopa Panesar (pictured above) brought her poise and
charm to AR Rahman’s music for the film Slumdog Millionaire. Rahman is a wondrous composer for the Indian
film industry (not just Bollywood but also the Tamil mark, not least in Thenali, a terrific score) but the mawkish
theme here is not one of his best.
The grand six-movement finale had great significance for Rattle: Stravinsky’s 1919 Suite from The Firebird was
the first work in which he conducted the CBSO in the newly-completed Symphony Hall in 1991. He prefaced it by
noting how back in his time in Birmingham, “we had a group of visionary politicians on both sides of the aisle,
something I thought was normal then," to canvas for the orchestra's invaluable home. The Suite needs that
space; it was the worst casualty of the sonic constriction in the PGR Live Stage, but still the pianissimos of the
Introduction and darkness before the final dawn, a Rattle speciality, had you straining to hear them, as intended.
And this, above all, must have been the greatest thrill for players kept apart – and furlough-idle – for so long. The
final toast raised by Lester – “to music, community and the next 100 years” – could not have been more
felicitous.