Simon Rattle on applause, female conductors, and his passion for Liverpool FC

I'm signing off now as I'm on a typical LSO schedule .... I'm feeling so guilty that there are so many interesting questions that i have got through so few. Thank you for your interest. We really need you out there!

At last the tipping point has come where we have so many wonderful female conductors. And it's not been a matter necessarily of ability in the past, but of lack of opportunity. A decade ago it was not taken for granted and now it absolutely is, which is the healthiest sign. When I look round and think without any particular order of.. .Simone Young, Natalie Stuzmann, MIrga G-T, Karina Kanellakis, Barbara Hannigan... what a thrilling time. And these five totally different personalities will give us a whole different vision of our music and I think it's one of the healthiest developments of the last few years.

I am so biased.If there was only composer i was allowed to conduct there is no doubt in my mind it would be Haydn. This music has everything within it without ever drawing attention to itself. .. Humanity, wit, warmth,intellect - it's all there. And while he incidentally also invented the string quartet and the symphony. He's the composer I would most like to have dinner with. But he never answers my texts.

While realising that London has many riches of its own, we do not have a magnificent concert hall - as Birmingham, Manchester, Liverpool, Gateshead , for instance, do. London is the capital and as it happens I'm conducting the London Symphony Orchestra, who desperately need a hall where they can grow and develop and where we can build a kind of beacon for music all over the country.
What we are trying to build here is not simply a concert hall, although of course that is part of it, but to intensify and increase all the magnificent work that is going on in music education and to make a place that will be a magnet for people of all ages to learn about music and to be infected by this hopefully incurable virus. An orchestra's life int he 21st century is not simply a matter of playing great concerts. This is apart of it but everything we do is inform by the work around it and the necessity to be evangelists for the cause. Yesterday I met for the first time the young students at the East London academy, which is one of our new initiatives and an important way to keep young people moving forward, kids who come from the kind of backgrounds that would not normally support their music making.

applause between symphonic movements used to be completely expected and composers in the 19th century would have been very upset if it hadn't happened. Brahms was thrilled when at the first performance of his second symphony the third movement had to be played three times before the audience would allow the finale to be played. We've got a bit far away from that now! Although an experience from this summer in Edinburgh with the LSO will remain with me forever: at the close of the First movement of John Adams' Harmonielehre - which ends like a rocket - a woman in the audience went "WOW" and everyone was silent for a moment and then laughed and then applauded. We all loved this and felt that that music is wow but we don't normally have the guts to be spontaneous - as you would in a jazz concert. And it's a shame.
On the other hand, sometimes an intensity of silence is the best reward.

It's a good question, i don't know if i have a good answer because it's complicated. I must say apart from the sheer quick getting to know of a piece from other people's recordings, the most useful time to listen is just after i've done a series of performances. Because then you know how you have packed your own suitcase. I'll never forget driving in a car after a week of performances of Elgar's second symphony and listening to a recording of Sir Adrian Boult on what was then a Walkman and thinking What a wise old owl was that! But i wondered if i would have completely understood how masterly he was if I hadn't had to deal with the problems first. But there's no doubt that if you try to imitate other conductors either physically or musically you end up simply with a version of the mannerisms and at the end of it all it's best to try to be yourself even if you're not that impressed with yourself.

I never heard James Moody although I went to Ronnie Scotts a lot. I do hope you were there for Betty Carter which were three of the most unforgettable evenings of my life.

I once had batons confiscated from my cabin baggage. People have said i've been slaughtering music for years but i've yet been accused of murder! But fortunately I dont have the problems of string players who have such enormous problems of where the instruments can safely go - will a cello be allowed an airline even if a ticket has been bought for it?!

I wonder whether non musicians will ever understand how deeply the place in which you play is tied up with how you perform. It is the difference between having a great violin and a mediocre one, for instance. Music goes out into space and therefore the room in which it is contained is the very essence of what we do and it changes absolutely everything about how you play and perform. Sometimes halls seem to have their own personality that pushes you in unexpected ways and a hall in which th audience can feel involved and enveloped is the absolute ideal. IN these moments you feel no distance between performer, music and audience. It sounds pretentiously mystical but for us it's a fact on the ground.

There are really great composers out there here and now. Probably in the same proportion that there always were - which is a very small percentage. And what we might thikn of as 'great' changes from decade to decade. It is clear now that Kurtag is one of the masters. 30 years ago it would not have been clear. But I can think of a goodly number of pieces that were written in this century that I know my great grandchildren will be playing and listening to. One we played last week - Hans Abrahmsen's Let Me Tell You. Haas In Vain is another obvious choice, as is George Benjamin's Written in Skin. Sofia Gubaidulina is still writing masterpieces at an advanced age. Betsy Jolas is a shamefully recent discovery for me but doesn't make her music any less extraordinary ... but i will fill too much space if i start on this.

Although I always wanted to conduct i presumed i would start my life as a percussionist or as a repetiteur in an opera house or both Because I won the Bournemouth Conducting competition when I was 19, life moved rather quickly. But if I had gone into that competition with any idea that I could have won it, I'm sure I would ever had got past the first round. My girlfriend had to force me to take the set of tails there i was so sure i wouldn't need it!

Dear Fairisfoul
if someone in the LPO has seen you conduct Mahler 2 and believes you should be invited then you must be a better conductor than you say you are. I'm sorry no-one will meet you for a cup of tea to discuss it but i happily will when i'm back in London in janaury if you want to contact the LSO office. Your story sounds fascinating and I would love to meet you.

My family and I still live in Berlin and both my sons are avid football fans. At least one of them is a liverpool supporter. We were at our local Greek restaurant that is frequented by a number of football players and we were all crammed round the big screen they have shouting. It's interesting being a Scouser in Germany watch a great German manager transform a team and be loved by fans and city. The energy is infectious but even more so is the good will and the lack of pretension and bullshit. As you can hear I'm a fan.

Nkoda is a marvel and it's at the beginning of its life but some way or other it's going to be part of music and performing. It's a publishing app where you can find an immense number of scores and orchestral materials and you can alter them as you go.

I do find people talking about Beethoven's flaws rather frustrating. This was a really inconvenient personality and composer and sometimes the music is ugly, sometimes it's awkward, it very often asks more than any human performer can give. But I really don't think these are flaws. This is part of what was an outsize personality and someone who was not just painting on the canvas but on the frames and the walls and the ceilings as well.
And you're completely right about Shostakovich 5!

Charles Koechlin is one of those extraordinary composers who often slip off everybody's radar and he wrote so many pieces that you have to be careful what you pick. I knew Les Bandar-log as a child and that was pure chance. But now in the world of YouTube it's much easier to find more of his music. I have a particular soft spot for the Seven Stars Symphony of which the stars are Greta Garbo and Charlie Chaplin as opposed to anything astronomical! I hope we get a chance to explore some more in the future.