The BPO (which elects its conductor) is to vote on whether to continue the contract of Sir Simon Rattle, reports the Independent:

http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/music/news/berlin-orchestra-may-force-rattle-to-drop-the-baton-815418.html

You're in KIEV on 21st Sept??  I hear the merry chink of beer-glasses from afar   Kiev is just down the road (relatively speaking).

Dare one ask what you're doing there?  It's not a city greatly associated with contemporary music usually, although there's a small circuit of "new stuff"

PS the locals prefer the spelling "Kyiv" these days politikal'naya korrektnost'

Well, Kie...  err, Kyiv's a mere toodle on the train from here,  and Ukraine is best-of-friends now they've settled-up for their gas supplies   so it sounds like an excellent pretext for an excursion     Super city with lots to see, leafy green boulevards etc.  Perhaps we can round-up Sir Walter Boote-Legge - if indeed he isn't already one of the concert-organisers

But meanwhile, back on the topic of the BPO, I agree that the hangar-concert perf of Gruppen does look quite juicy

It's a strange thing with Rattle and Messiaen. He clearly loves the music, but for me at least, he never seems to bring it off in performance. I've tried his Trois Petites Liturgies, his Turnagalîla (both on LP and CD) and his Éclairs ... (in three different performances), but always come away disappointed.

Sadly the Indy takes little notice of classical music generally

An unsympathetic person taking a less than charitable view may very well conclude that his rehearsals at least are unremittingly boring.

I think I may have missed a joke, but the only rehearsal I ever saw Simon Rattle give was one of the most exciting rehearsals I've ever seen in my life.

Dead honest.

That was then and this is now, but I remember sitting in on a rehearsal of the Schubert 10 completion (can't remember who did it) , clearly a contractual obligation for a ropey score, but Rattle breathed life into it. As I mentioned before, my secondary school was the venue for his very first pro appearance having won the Bournemouth Symphony conductors comp as then was, and ditto hooking we cross-legged on the parquet. He always struck me as Germanic in his gesture and style so that the BPO would be a natural home-I 'd have thought plenty of other good German bands might seek his services-your Bambergs, Bavarian Radios etc.