Sir Simon Rattle conducts 'The Monster in the Maze', Barbican

Book your tickets now: Sir Simon Rattle conducts a new opera for children, London 2015. 

Sir Simon Rattle , a behemoth of British music, returns to the Barbican to conduct The Monster in the Maze , a new opera for children, alongside William Walton’s First Symphony. The concert inaugurates a new series of collaborations – helmed by Rattle himself – between the London Symphony Orchestra, young musicians and locals. Here, the LSO will be accompanied by their Youth Choir, Community Choir and students from the prestigious Guildhall School of Music and Drama.

The Monster in the Maze, composed by Jonathan Dove, retells the story of Theseus, Ariadne and the Minotaur. It has been especially written to allow students to sit alongside professional musicians. Expect shimmering, melodious music with plenty of dramatic thrills. Regular Dove collaborator and Guildhall tutor Alasdair Middleton provides the libretto.

Dove might be the most socially engaged of all contemporary composers, tirelessly working with amateur and professional musicians from the East London communities surrounding his Bethnal Green home. His operas, of which The Monster is his twentieth-seventh, range from a setting of a seventeenth-century tragedy to a dark comedy set in an airport. Pinocchio (2008), a deft adaptation of Carlo Collodi’s delightful yet disturbing tale, won him a British Composer Award. Dove’s accessible, airy music has seen him compared to John Adams, while his mastery of setting the English language has drawn parallels to Benjamin Britten.

William Walton is one of the most significant English composers of the 20th century. His First Symphony (1934-5), commissioned when he was only thirty years old, is widely considered the peak of his orchestral practice. It was composed at a time of considerable emotional turmoil: Walton’s lover had abandoned him. The first three movements are seismic, exploding with thwarted passion and melancholic malice. The finale, added to the piece after he began courting another, is one of the most triumphant in the entire symphonic repertoire, with an irresistible rhythmic energy.