In celebration of the 60th birthday this Monday of the renowned conductor Sir Simon Rattle, the National Portrait Gallery has acquired a previously unpublished photograph of the musician, which was taken in 1982 with a Victorian plate camera.
The photographer, Rory Coonan, had asked if he could photograph Rattle, then 27 but already principal conductor of the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra, while he was working at Craxton Studios, in London. The rehearsal space was originally an Edwardian artist’s studio.
Coonan said he had had to allow the shot, taken on the 150-year-old plate camera, a long exposure, which took some patience and stillness on Rattle’s part. “These old plate cameras require the sitter to participate, make an effort. It takes great concentration to sit under these conditions. I recall Rattle was exceptionally composed – a rare ability.”
This year, Rattle marks his birthday by bringing the Berlin Philharmonic, which he has led since 2002, to London for a concert series with performances at the Barbican and Royal Festival Hall.
The BBC also celebrates the event with a month of special programming across radio and television, beginning with the first broadcast of archive recordings of Rattle conducting the Birmingham orchestra playing the complete Beethoven symphony cycle in 1995, starting on Radio 3 on Monday evening. There will also be live broadcasts of the London concerts, and a new biographical programme: Simon Rattle: the Making of a Maestro, on BBC2, to be shown on 14 February.
Rattle was knighted in 1994 on the eve of his 40th birthday, and received the order of merit, which is the personal gift of the Queen, last year.
Coonan is also a former head of architecture at the Arts Council, founder of the research body NESTA, and has written widely on the arts, said back in 1982 he spent weeks working on the photograph, but then put it away and forgot about it.
“I follow Susan Sontag’s dictum that ‘time turns all photographs into art’, so I put it aside while my children were small, in the hope that it would have become a work of art by the time they had grown up. It seems to have worked, although others must be the judge.”
• This article was amended on 19 January 2015. An earlier version said that Rattle was principal conductor of the Birmingham Philharmonic Orchestra at the time the photo was taken. That should have been the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra. In addition, an incorrect reference to Coonan’s training as a painter has been deleted.
