Sir Simon Rattle

Born in Liverpool in 1955, Simon Rattle studied piano, percussion, and orchestral conducting at the Royal Academy of Music in London. In 1980, he began his close collaboration with the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra, which he led as Music Director from 1990 to 1998, transforming it into an internationally acclaimed ensemble. In 2002, he took up the position of Chief Conductor of the Berliner Philharmoniker, whose repertoire he expanded throughout his 16-year tenure by including new music and semi-staged productions, as well as Baroque repertoire and historical rarities. His education program in Berlin has garnered numerous accolades, including the Comenius Award and the Schiller Prize of the City of Mannheim. Rattle then spent six years as Music Director of the London Symphony Orchestra, with which he continues to collaborate as Conductor Laureate. Since 2023, Sir Simon has served as Chief Conductor of the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra and, since 2024, as Principal Guest Conductor of the Czech Philharmonic Orchestra. He is also closely affiliated with the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment as a Principal Artist and is the Founding Patron of the Birmingham Contemporary Music Group. Rattle made his operatic debut in 1977 at the Glyndebourne Festival and has since been engaged by the Opéra national de Paris, the Royal Opera House in London, Dutch National Opera in Amsterdam, the Vienna Staatsoper, the Metropolitan Opera in New York, and the Festival d’Aix-en-Provence. He regularly appears at the Berlin Staatsoper, where he is scheduled to conduct Janáček’s The Cunning Little Vixen in the 2025-26 season. In 1994, Queen Elizabeth II knighted Simon Rattle as a Knight Bachelor. He has been granted Germany’s Federal Cross of Merit and is a Chevalier of the French Légion d’honneur. He received the Léonie Sonning Music Prize in 2013, the honorary title Freedom of the City of London in 2018, and, in 2025, the Ernst von Siemens Music Prize, the highest award in the world of classical music.

Lucerne Festival (IMF) debut on 8 September 1996 with the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra in a program of works by Berlioz, Beethoven, Tippett, and Haydn.

July 2025