Liverpool

In April 1969, Witold Lutosławski was invited to Liverpool. During a concert with the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, his Second Symphony was heard for the first time in England. It was given a muted assessment in a review by Denis McCaldin, who six years later, in Lancaster, proposed that Lutosławski be awarded his first English honorary doctorate. The fourteen-year-old Simon Rattle had a completely different reaction to the symphony: ‘for me, it was an intoxicating experience’, he recalled years later.