‘We should never get used to Beethoven’

For Simon Rattle, Beethoven was, of course, brilliant. And perhaps crazy.

How much of the composer’s creativity was tied to his loss of hearing?

“If he had not been so cut off from the world by this cruel affliction, could he have gone to the place he went? I wonder,” the British conductor says.

“It’s no wonder even many of his most intelligent contemporaries thought that he was insane. (Carl Maria von) Weber walked out after the first movement of the Seventh Symphony saying that he’s no longer writing anything that could be called music, this is only fit for the lunatic asylum.”

Long known as an advocate of contemporary composers, Rattle has focused his autumn season on Beethoven. He conducted two complete cycles of the nine symphonies at Berlin’s Philharmonie last month, then took the Berlin Philharmonic on tour for additional cycles in November at the Philharmonie de Paris, Vienna’s Musikverein and New York’s Carnegie Hall. One more is planned for Tokyo’s Suntory Hall in May.

Rattle thinks back to a conversation he had in 1988 with Herbert von Karajan, the Berlin Philharmonic’s leader from 1955-89.

“When I had my last talk with Karajan, sitting in what’s now my dressing room, he said, ‘Oh, Simon, you know you have to write off your first 100 Beethoven Fifths.’ At this point I’d conducted three, and so I gulped,” Rattle says. “He could be a tough old (man), obviously. He was very, very welcoming to young musicians. There was a kind of gruff charm about him.”

Now 60, Rattle conducted his first Beethoven cycle with the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra in 1995 and led the Vienna Philharmonic in performances at Berlin, Tokyo and Vienna in 2001 and 2002 when EMI released a complete set. He became the Berlin Philharmonic’s chief conductor in 2002 and conducted his first Beethoven cycle with that orchestra six years later.

“Sometimes at the beginning it was a struggle for me to bring everything I’ve learned from working for a quarter of a century with period instruments into Berlin,” Rattle says, “but actually I think somewhere we’ve met, and that’s very satisfying.

Beethoven’s symphonies premièred from 1800 through 1824 — three years before his death at age 56.

Rattle favoured the idiosyncratic performances of Wilhelm Furtwaengler over the more brisk tempi of Arturo Toscanini.

In March, the Philharmonic will release audio and video recordings of Rattle’s Berlin performances.

“We should remember how astonishing and astounding and dangerous the music is now,” Rattle says. “We know it so well, but we should never get used to it. Nobody has (modern painter) Francis Bacon on their walls in their house — or very few people — but sometimes people listen to Beethoven as though it (were) background and a comfort, and I think that is very dangerous.”