Simon Rattle grits his teeth and flares his nostrils. He raises his silver eyebrows, opens his mouth in vowel shapes, closes his eyes again in an ecstatic expression, bounces his baton off the air. These are his ways of expressing how the music makes him feel. They are also the tics that bother some of the musicians of the Berlin Philharmonic. Part of the orchestra finds him tense, nervous, controlling. They want their space to play. At the end of Rattle’s 16-year tenure as music director of the orchestra, their relationship is not unlike a couple that’s been married for too long. A former member of the Karajan Academy told VAN, “There are some members who take off as many weeks as they can” for Rattle’s concerts.

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… has been an editor at VAN since 2015. He’s the author of The Life and Music of Gérard Grisey: Delirium and Form (Boydell & Brewer), and his journalism has appeared in The Baffler, the New York...

... earned degrees in development studies, Asian studies, and cultural anthropology from universities in Berlin, Seoul, Edinburgh, and London. He is a founder of VAN, where he serves as publisher and editor-in-chief.