Sir Simon Rattle on Stravinsky’s Chant funèbre (5 min.)

In 1908, Igor Stravinsky wrote a piece of funeral music entitled Chant funèbre in memory of his recently deceased, deeply revered teacher Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov. The music was lost in the turmoil of the revolution, and Stravinsky himself heard the work only once, at its premiere. It was not until 2015 that the score of the eleven-minute composition was rediscovered in a library in St. Petersburg. The Berliner Philharmoniker gave the work its German premiere in June 2017 under the direction of its chief conductor. In this short film, Sir Simon Rattle tells the story of this spectacular find and describes his joy in performing this previously unknown masterpiece by one of the greatest composers of the 20th century.