In today's Sunday Times - London:

   HUGH CANNING sees the Berlin Philharmonic's chief
  conductor-elect woo press and audiences with Mahler
and broken German

 I am ein Berliner

   Berlin's love affair with Sir Simon Rattle was confirmed last weekend,
   when the British conductor made his first appearance at the city's
   Philharmonie with the band he will soon - well, after 2002 at least
   - be able to call his own: the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra, arguably
   the world's most prestigious symphonic ensemble.

   The two performances of Deryck Cooke's realisation of the sketches
   of Mahler's 10th Symphony came at the climax of the "Berlin Festival
   Weeks", in which virtually every note of Mahler's music - including
   his arrangements of a Weber opera and his retouching of a Schumann
   symphony - was performed.  Both were packed out.  Remarkable really,
   for although the Mahler-Cooke symphony had its German premiere in
   Berlin (under the baton of Rattle's sometime mentor, Berthold
   Goldschmidt) in 1964, and two recordings with other Berlin orchestras
   are extant, the Berlin Philharmonic has never before tackled Mahler's
   unfinished masterpiece.

   The 10th, in Cooke's astonishingly Mahlerian version, has long been
   central to Rattle's repertoire.  His first recording for EMI, an
   astonishing 21 years ago, was of this very work with the Bournemouth
   Symphony Ochestra, and during his still-young career he has conducted
   it more than 90 times.  Indeed, he can justly claim to be the work's
   foremost champion, and there was a time when he used his reputation
   as one of the hottest young conductors in the business to insist on
   a debut with a work that most senior Mahlerians have only conducted
   in fragmentary form: the glorious torso of the opening Adagio, the
   only one of the five movements that Mahler completed in its full
   orchestral clothing.

   Twelve years ago, when Rattle made his debut with the Berlin
   Philharmonic, Mahler's 10th would have been out of the question.
   The orchestra's autocratic chief conductor, Herbert von Karajan,
   belonged to the old school of Mahlerians who refused to accept that
   Cooke's orchestration was a valid and viable addition to the Mahler
   symphonic canon.  Rattle had to compromise with a thrilling performance
   of the Sixth Symphony, which began the relationship that led to his
   election as Claudio Abbado's successor in three seasons' time.

   But the fact that the Berliners were prepared to programme the 10th
   at all as part of Berlin's Mahler-fest must be a sure indication of
   the high estimation with which Rattle is regarded by the musicians,
   especially the younger players Abbado has done so much to recruit in
   his 10 years at the helm.  At the time of the election of the new
   chief conductor in June, it was put about that among a short list of
   four or five names, Rattle and Daniel Barenboim - music director of
   the State Opera, in what used to be the heart of East Berlin - were
   close frontrunners in the first ballot, but it transpires that Rattle
   was elected by a substantial majority.

   Although the players would probably not admit it, the overwhelming
   support given to Rattle by the Berlin and national German press, and
   the rapturous reception accorded him by the public for two programmes
   he conducted there immediately preceding the voting, must surely have
   influenced their decision, even though one would think it obvious to
   any musician that Rattle is without question Barenboim's superior as
   a symphonic conductor.  Certainly, Rattle has galvanised the Berlin
   public with his charismatic platform presence - what one might call
   Rattle-dazzle - and the youthful informality of his offstage persona.
   He has charmed the Berlin press, too, with his novice efforts to
   speak German ("Denglisch", they call it), and the photographers, with
   his mane of silver-grey locks and oddball taste in casual clothes.
   He already has a youthful following in Berlin: outside the hall for
   the first concert a queue of 100 hopefuls gathered for any returns,
   most of them of student age.  Tickets for Philharmonic concerts -
   most of them available by subscription, for which there is a
   Glyndebourne-style waiting list - are notoriously difficult to obtain,
   so Rattle will have to do something for younger music lovers in Berlin.

   At his press conference, the day after the first of the two Mahler
   10ths, Rattle was in touchy-feely, new Labourish mode, revealing
   little about his plans for the orchestra but talking a lot about his
   new musical family in Berlin.  He repeatedly emphasised that he was
   in "for the long haul", although when asked whether he would live in
   Berlin, he honestly replied that London was "home" (Berlin journalists
   must have short memories, for Karajan never lived in the city - he
   always stayed in a suite reserved personally for him at the Kempinski
   Hotel).

   Rattle deftly fielded some hostile questioning about earlier
   reservations he had publicly expressed about the orchestra, and
   balanced his regard for the Berliners' historic traditions -
   acknowledging his predecessors Nikisch, Furtwangler, Karajan and
   "Claudio" - with implicit criticisms of Karajan's artistic directorship
   and the conservative programming of his later years.  A decade after
   the great German conductor's death, his memory has acquired a rosy
   aura - at least for those who don't care about his opportunistic
   dealings with the Nazis in the 1930s and 1940s - but his last years
   with the Berlin Philharmonic were soured by rows over orchestral
   appointments and financial scandals whose repercussions the
   classical-music industry is still feeling today.  In every sense,
   Rattle's appointment represents a break with a discredited past of
   classical music for a social elite, and Berlin's Senate - more
   concerned than ever to justify the huge arts subsidies swallowed up
   by the city's most important arts institutions - will welcome Rattle's
   refreshing determination to make classical music of the highest
   quality available to all.  For a British visitor, the press conference
   supplied at least one priceless moment of sublime irony, when a young
   journalist asked Rattle if he would work to secure more money for
   the players.  The Philharmonic gets about 7m from the city - more
   than twice as much as the four independent London orchestras receive
   together from the Arts Council of England.  Many of the players are
   on fat salaries as professors in the music colleges, and all of their,
   admittedly dwindling, freelance earnings through recording go straight
   into their own pockets.  A wry smile fleetingly appeared on Rattle's
   face as he presumably pondered the comparatively pitiful remuneration
   of British orchestral musicians, and of his "Birminghamsters" in
   particular.

   The concert itself was a personal triumph for Rattle and perhaps the
   most significant in the history of Cooke's performing version of
   Mahler's Unfinished, since the Berlin Philharmonic will be certainly
   the most high-profile orchestra in the world to have recorded the
   10th with a front-rank conductor (EMI's microphones caught both
   concerts live and will issue the record next year).  Although the
   performance betrayed some signs that the music was not yet in the
   orchestra's blood - the exhaustingly high writing for brass instruments
   taxed the principal trumpets, and the strings did not soar as sweetly
   into the stratosphere as they did in the Karajan days - it was a
   performance of such high drama and emotional intensity that Cooke's
   work seemed more Mahlerian than ever.

   It has been fascinating over the past few weeks to have had the
   opportunity to hear the three finest orchestras in Europe playing
   symphonies by Mahler: the Vienna Philharmonic under Rattle in the
   Second at the Proms and Edinburgh Festival, Amsterdam's Royal
   Concert-gebouw Orchestra under Riccardo Chailly in the Fourth at
   London's Festival Hall, and Rattle with his Berliners in the 10th.
   Of the three, surprisingly perhaps, it was the enthralling, immaculately
   played account of the Fourth by the RCO and Chailly that struck me
   as the most completely realised, but the Amsterdamers were playing
   in London after a sequence of performances, and Chailly - alone, it
   seems, of the leading international maestros - knows how to make the
   notoriously unflattering acoustic of the RFH work for his orchestra.

   But Rattle's rapport with both the Berlin and Vienna orchestras is
   now such that, despite passing technical frailties, he can achieve
   electrifying results in the concert hall.  Certainly, the Berliners
   of Rattle's Mahler 10th were unrecognisable as the complacent band
   that played dreary Beethoven, Schumann and Brahms at the 1998 Edinburgh
   Festival.  It will be interesting to see whether the Rattle effect
   has made any impact on their playing for Abbado when the Italian
   conductor brings them to the RFH for a performance of Mahler's Third
   Symphony on October 11.  Rattle evidently makes musical sparks fly,
   and the players are in for perhaps a rougher ride than they bargained
   for.  Exciting times lie ahead for Berlin audiences, and one only
   hopes that London will get the benefit of being the home of the Berlin
   Philharmonic's chief conductor-elect.

Tony Duggan,  England.
My (developing) Mahler recordings survey is at:
http://www.musicweb.force9.co.uk/music/Mahler/index.html