Czech Philharmonic • Velvet Revolution Concert

Sir Simon Rattle recalled: “It isn’t often that I fall in love with an orchestra, and most of my relationships with orchestras date back quite a while. But when I conducted the Czech Philharmonic for the first time, the kind of music I would like to hear the orchestra play occurred to me immediately. It has been able to preserve its own typical sound, which is perfectly suited to Mahler. One of my old mentors was Berthold Goldschmidt, who conducted the British premiere of Mahler’s Third Symphony, among other things. Of the many wonderful things he told me about Mahler’s Ninth, one thing really stuck with me: ‘Remember that Mahler put everything he hated about Austria into the first scherzo and everything he hated about Vienna into the second one. If you have that in mind, you’ll never be far off the mark.’”