At a Prom concert in the Royal Albert Hall a few years ago, a few seconds after the famous bassoon
passage at the beginning of the Rite of Spring, a mobile phone sounded. Sir Simon Rattle simply stopped the Berlin Philharmonic and started again. It makes you thankful they didn’t exist when Szell and Klemperer were around.
This was the work that catapulted the then 21 year-old tyro conductor into the limelight when he conducted it with the Youth orchestra of Great Britain in 1976. I remember it vividly: I was there. Since then, he also recorded it during his tenure with the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra. Whereas that was a respectable reading, this is in another league. In terms of tempos, colour and rhythm, it’s superb. The barbarism is beautifully tempered with finesse. It’s one of the great Rites. The only version I’d put above it is the stereo re-make by Igor Markevich and the aristocratic Philharmonia in 1960 where the orchestral shriek at the opening of the second part is...