The chemistry between tradition and innovation powered Sir Simon Rattle’s relationship with the Berliner Philharmoniker, above all during his time as the orchestra’s Chief Conductor and Artistic Director (2002-2018). As the successor to Wilhelm Furtwängler, Herbert von Karajan and Claudio Abbado, his mission was to take this pre-eminent musical institution into the 21st century. “What Rattle has brought … is a new spirit of adventure,” declared The Times in 2006, and later looked back on the “exhilarating, epoch-hopping eclecticism of Simon Rattle’s era in Berlin”. Through all this Rattle preserved the orchestra’s distinctive sonority, notable, in the words of the New York Times, for its “sheer grandeur … and rich, red-blooded warmth”. He first conducted the Berliner Philharmoniker in 1987, and the recordings in this 45-CD box span the years from 1994 to 2012. Very much reflecting Rattle’s vision for the orchestra, the symphonic, choral and operatic works range from pillars of Austro-German Classicism, Romanticism and Modernism through French, Russian and Czech repertoire to showcases for contemporary composers from around the world – and even a film soundtrack. As Rattle said at the end of his tenure in Berlin: “Music is for everybody, and we’ve all believed this.”

The 45 CDs in the box provide a representative picture of Rattle’s years with the Berlin Philharmonic. The repertoire ranges from the 18th-century (Haydn – a composer long favoured by Rattle) to the 21st century (even the score for the 2006 film Das Parfum). It embraces symphonic music (including spectacular works from the late-Romantic/Modern eras), choral music and opera, all from a diversity of national and cultural traditions. The “traditional” Austro-German repertoire is given its due.