BERLIN -- The same random mechanism that turns perfectly good plans into
mush can work in the opposite direction too.  Consider a poor itinerary
leaving six useless hours in Brussels Friday evening, between London and
Berlin.  I looked up a friend and spent the time with a passionate speech
about the newly-found greatness of Simon Rattle (new, perhaps to him, and
definitely to me.)

You know, of course,' the friend interrupted, that Rattle is here in
Brussels, giving a concert tonight.' Of course I didn't, otherwise I would
have planned for it -- and chances are it wouldn't have worked.  I had only
one question:  what time.  Place, orchestra, program didn't matter; the
concert had to be between 8 and 11.  It was.  And so last night, I ended
up in the Palace of Fine Arts concert hall where Rattle was conducting the
Orchestra Of The Age Of Enlightenment in a program of the Berlioz Romeo and
Juliet' and the Symphony Fantastique.  Of course, there were no tickets
left.  Of course, I got one anyway, facing Rattle about 30 feet away.

R&J turned out to be one of my finest concert experiences.  Conducting a
Wagnerian-size orchestra, with 6 (six) harps), Rattle tore into the mad
rush of the opening -- telling the story, not showing off.  Turning to
contemplation and meandering, the music kept pouring out of the orchestra
with the exact *rightness* you can hear in the Rattle-Berlin Mahler
Seventh.  It was all fluent, straightforward, true and precise, romantic
but not a smidgen too much.

The musicians are hanging on every gesture, every expression, and they
truly play their hearts out for him.  In the weight class of Ashkenazy and
John Adams, Rattle still has the curls from the wunderkind period, but the
hair is all white now.  Otherwise, no age is showing:  at the top of his
profession, Rattle looks (and plays music) as if he just got his first
conducting assignment in the conservatory.  I haven't seen a conductor
enjoy making music so much since Bernstein on a good daz.  You can't fake
this overwhelming delight in the work:  it's as real as the results.

Romeo came to the point of realizing the full impact of what was happening:
Rattle caught his breath, and -- as if his perfect baton technique didn't
matter at all -- the orchestra picked up the conductor's body language, and
the music's intense suspense enveloped the audience.  When the great love
scene began, I thought Rattle made his first mistake of the evening:  the
theme sounded tentative, held back.  But then, as it returned, more assured
and intense, all of a sudden it all made sense -- conductors who introduce
that sweeping music in ist full form the first time it appears miss the
opportunity to present the true drama.  As the theme returned for the third
time, in Rattle's hands, it sounded transfigured, the essence of yearning
itself, pure and sweeping, moving the audience to tears.

I don't know if it was Rattle, the orchestra or the audience -- or all
three -- were too drained by the intensity and excellence of the first
work, but when Symphony Fantastique arrived, this was merely' good Berlioz,
with a certain amount of play-through, some serious errors in the brass
(authentic instruments or not), a bit unsettled, noisy even...  all the
way through the third movement, when the Rattle sound' returned.  It didn't
matter.  If you could ever witness a work as magnificently played as Romeo
and Juliet,' you too would carefully plan a stopover between London and
Berlin.

Janos Gereben
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