We’ve just returned from our visit to the preview of Sir Simon Rattle and the London Symphony Orchestra performing Stockhausen at the Tate Modern, and what a treat it was! The evening (of only 50mins performance; 60mins in total) started with Olivier Messiaen’s 1964 Et exspecto resurrectionem mortuorum (And I await the resurrection of the dead), a piece for brass, winds and percussion. Perhaps the most memorable bit about this part was how one of the musicians (no instruments/names mentioned; anyone present tonight would know who I’m talking about) thoroughly got it wrong big time, and – much more impressively – how the great maestro, Sir Simon Rattle walked up to the person in question at the end of the piece, and gently, smilingly, warmly, and clearly trying to suppress a burst of incredulous laughter, asked “What happened?”, to which the perpetrator said “I don’t know”. The world’s most famous […]