For the first time since becoming music director of the LSO in September, Rattle was last week able to compare his home turf at the Barbican with Hamburg’s enviable architectural statement of a concert hall the Elbphilharmonie, which celebrates its first anniversary this month.
The Elbphilharmonie scores highly for its location in the flow of the River Elbe, surrounded on three sides by water.
The fluid, wave-like, roof rises up to 120 yards and is studded with shimmering glass panes that reflect the sky.
It is perched on top of an existing brick warehouse, with a public plaza linking the two structures to give a panoramic view over the city of Hamburg and its port.
There are three concert halls, a music education area, restaurant, cafes and a hotel.
The LSO concert was in the largest hall and although audience capacity is only slightly greater than the Barbican Hall, seating 2,100, the stage is considerably more spacious.
In the Barbican musicians are closer together and the Elbphilharmonie’s almost spherical auditorium gives the audience clear sight lines to every seat.
The eclectic programme began with Schubert’s Symphony no 8 “Unfinished” before moving on to the centrepiece, featuring Czech mezzo-soprano Magdalena Kožená – Lady Rattle in her private life.
For the first set Kožená chose Gustav Mahler’s Rückert Lieder, songs by Friedrich Rückert, delivered with an inward reflective note that was in line with the poet’s elegiac theme.
Mahler was conductor of the Hamburg state opera house for six years and wrote his second and third symphonies in the city.
After the interval, there was a change of mood for George Frideric Handel’s three arias, as Kožená swept in wearing a vibrant green statement of a frock that drew gasps of approval from the audience.
She delivered a storming performance in the title role of Agrippina – Handel’s first operatic masterpiece written in 1709.
After Agrippina’s fury in the aria Pensieri, at having her schemes thwarted, Kožená chose the moving lament from Ariodante, Scherza Infida, and the final aria of reconciliation, Dopo Notte, as Ariodante finds that his love is faithful after all.
This was delivered in fine dramatic style, of which Handel would have approved. Handel had arrived in Hamburg in 1703, aged 18, and was nearly killed in a duel with fellow composer Johann Mattheson.
Luckily Mattheson’s sword hit a button on Handel’s coat and bounced off.
The final work of the evening was Les Boréades – Suite, a series of lyrical dances from Jean-Philippe Rameau’s Les Boréades, a baroque drama with unusual sound effects, including thunder sheet and wind machine to conjure up Boréas, god of the North Wind, as he pursues the Queen of Bactria.
The Elbphilharmonie and Barbican Hall both have fine acoustics but for rattle it’s the size that matters, to enable the LSO to range into the largest of the classical works.
Now it remains to be seen whether in changing circumstances the City of London can hold to its dream of a glorious new arts quarter in and around the Barbican.