Simon Rattle Leads Debussy and Ravel

Simon Rattle returns to Marian Anderson Hall at The Kimmel Center from January 28 to January 30, 2027, leading The Philadelphia Orchestra in a program of works by Debussy, Ravel and John Adams. It's a three-night run, so you've got a few dates to choose from.

The program opens with John Adams' Harmonielehre, a 40-minute piece that takes up a good chunk of the evening. After that comes Debussy's La Mer, 23 minutes of orchestral writing that's meant to evoke the sea. The night closes with the Suite No. 2 from Ravel's Daphnis et Chloé, which runs about 18 minutes. Between the three, the music covers roughly 80 minutes of playing time, and with an intermission, the whole thing should run around two hours.

These are pieces Rattle has spent a lot of his career with. Critics have described his reading of La Mer as an enthralling and radical three-movement symphony of breathless sweep, with savage climaxes and audacious harmonies. His treatment of Harmonielehre has been called definitive and spellbinding. The Ravel suite was originally written for a ballet based on an ancient myth, and Rattle describes what he hears in it as the pulsing energy underneath the score. It's a program he's won particular acclaim for, and he's bringing it back to Philadelphia as a set he knows well.

If you're the kind of person who likes to see how the work gets put together, there's an open rehearsal offered for each concert. The performances run January 28 through January 30 at Marian Anderson Hall, inside The Kimmel Center at 300 S Broad St, Philadelphia, PA 19102.