Simon Rattle joins LSO: is it good news for classical music?

The news that conductor Sir Simon Rattle is to join the London Symphony Orchestra as its music director has set Britain's classical music world abuzz. The British conductor is currently director of the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra, where he has been since 2002.

He has three years left on his contract, and will not take up the position at the LSO until September 2017, but the announcement has already prompted much excitement and speculation about what it will mean for classical music in Britain.

All hail the return of Simon Rattle, says Ivan Hewett in the Daily Telegraph. It's "tremendous news", says Hewett, because "Britain's very own superstar conductor… has a charisma that's all too rare in classical music".

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Rattle will be in his element at the LSO, says Hewett, "because the orchestra's brightly coloured, extrovert sound is just right for the glittering, modernist music that suits him best". Hewett adds that the announcement is "the best news for classical music in this country in decades".

"Musical London and the airwaves are gripped by Rattlemania," says Hugh Canning in the Sunday Times. Rattle's return is "good news for music, musicians and audiences in London. There is no conductor of Rattle's stature who performs such a wide variety of music with such conviction."

Yes, Rattle's return to Britain is "just the sort of seismic creative shock UK classical music needs", says Tom Service in The Guardian. It's a once in a generation opportunity, he adds, not just for the LSO, whose national significance and international profile is raised exponentially, "but for the whole of orchestral and classical music in the country".

Partly it's the politics, admits Service, because Rattle is "the most powerful ambassador for music and music education in the country" and politicians will have to engage with him. But mostly, he says, "it's the music".

The move has sparked speculation that Rattle's appointment may lead to the building of a new concert hall, after the conductor complained that London's concert halls were not up to international standards.

And "such is the desire for Rattle to return to his homeland that even Tory politicians, it seems, are prepared to make an exception and promise millions of pounds of funding", suggests Richard Morrison in The Times.

But David Nice on the Arts Desk says he "can't be as unreservedly ecstatic as the press at large". While it's true that Rattle has "done the classical world the service of giving it a recognition outside the arts pages", says Nice, he argues that Rattle's conducting has recently become "over-interpreted" and "micro-managed", and that a younger conductor (Rattle turned sixty in January) "might have transformed the sometimes self-satisfied aura of the LSO".

Nice also questions Rattle's insistence on a new concert hall. "Should the millions be spent on a luxury when there are two things that need to come first?" asks Nice. What about saving arts institutions, which won't be around to perform in the new hall if the cuts continue? What about funding education "so that there will also be audiences to go and listen to the concerts in 10 or more years' time?"