Rattle conducts Debussy, Adams and Ravel | London Symphony Orchestra

Sunrises, seascapes and blue Californian skies: it’s all about colour as Sir Simon Rattle conducts 20th-century favourites by Ravel, Debussy and John Adams.

Dawn breaks in paradise, and in Ravel’s Daphnis et Chloé you can hear every flurry of birdsong and glint of dew. Debussy gazes at the English Channel, and hears new worlds of sonic colour. And in 1980s San Francisco, John Adams imagines a supertanker rising from the sea and rocketing into the shining Pacific sky. Sir Simon Rattle has always enjoyed music that paints pictures; and tonight, they’re positively cinematic.

After all, no conductor does it better – and the LSO’s music director has championed this music throughout his career. His friendship with John Adams goes back decades: expect him to get right to the heart of the pulsing rhythms and glittering colours of the epic Harmonielehre.