It's apparently finally done. Simon Rattle and the Berlin Philharmonic have penned a deal keeping him there through 2018. For how many weeks per year, we do not know.

What was the hold up? The AP story doesn't say.

Rattle's signing had been predicted by the Philharmonic before - and repeatedly over a period of many months - after a mysterious and confusing moment in which the orchestra wasn't sure whether it wanted to keep him.

No one is good enough to be musical leader of the Berlin Philharmonic. We all get that. Players have made that clear before with their complaining about Rattle and previous music directors. So maybe the past few months of Rattle not signing his contract were about getting players to be sure, to be really, really sure.

Rattle is a frequent visitor to the podium of the Philadelphia Orchestra, which has made it clear on several occasions it would like him to be music director.

Conductors, these days especially, have to be more than musicians. They are advocates, teachers and, in a substantive way, cheerleaders for the art form. Vladimir Jurowski, who guest conducts the Philadelphia Orchestra this week, has a couple of charismatic gifts unseen by the public during his previous visits here.

In this clip (from 2003) of him speaking about Die Fledermaus, he not only proves an elegant pianist, but also an insightful thinker. It's clear Jurowski is a conductor who makes interpretive choices based on clues in the score and deep consideration. Listen to five minutes of what he has to say about Fledermaus and you'll never hear the piece the same way again.

Jurowski leads the orchestra Thursday, Friday and Saturday in Stravinsky's Scherzo Fantastique, the Tchaikovsky Violin Concerto with the astonishing young violinist Sergey Khachatryan and one of the lesser-heard symphonies of Prokofiev, the No. 4.

The Philadelphia Orchestra has put its upcoming Saturday night and Sunday afternoon concerts on sale. Big sale. Tickets are $30. Log on to philorch.org and use the promo code DANNY, as in Daniel Matsukawa, who is performing the Mozart Bassoon Concerto. You can also buy tickets by calling 215-893-1999.

Also on the program: Schumann's Symphony No. 1, the "Spring," and Beethoven's Symphony No. 4. Roger Norrington conducts.

And here, by the way, is my review for tomorrow's paper.

Roger Norrington at the Philadelphia Orchestra is a bit like the substitute teacher who catches you by surprise one day. First, you find that he’s moved everything around. And then, when he makes his first sound, he’s using phrases you’ve never heard before. Doesn’t he know how things are done around here?
Of course he does. But you don’t import the conductor who founded the London Classical Players unless you’re expecting new ideas. Or in this case, old ones. Norrington is known for his advocacy of period instruments and historically correct instrumental techniques, and although there’s a limit to what he can do in a week with the Philadelphia Orchestra — an organism of very 20th-century sensibilities — it’s salutary for the orchestra to stretch itself, as you could hear it doing Friday afternoon in a program of three works (all in B Flat Major) by Beethoven, Mozart and Schumann.
The Schumann, the Symphony No. 1, “Spring,” was not an enormous success. Norrington banished vibrato from the strings, as is his wont, and the lean and clipped sound might have done good things for clarity. But what was lost in terms of warmth was substantial. He sometimes restricted his number of beats per bar in the first movement, which made the kinds of connections between phrases he might have been seeking, but left a lot of detail untended.
Norrington is not exactly Mr. Fix-it in performance. His gestures are basic, and he stops conducting at certain points, presumably to encourage chamber music-like interactions among the players. That worked in Mozart’s Bassoon Concerto, K. 191, with an orchestra of less than two dozen players, where shared ideas fired like synapses around the ensemble. Hornist Jeffrey Lang was particularly elegant in the way he wove his sound into those around him. Principal bassoonist Daniel Matsukawa was a more than respectable soloist, nimble and legato if not brimming with personality.
Norrington’s contributions to Beethoven’s Symphony No. 4 were the most rewarding on the program. He heightened drama by slowing the “adagio” introduction and brightening the “allegro vivace” that followed. Don S. Liuzzi used hard, small mallets to get a sound more like a snare-drum roll than the resonant thud he usually gets with his timpani. The second movement, marked “Adagio,” was faster than I’ve ever heard it, which changed its usual saunter into something more jubilant. If the fourth movement remained to be worked out, the dynamics and accents of the third were so effectively deployed they made you grateful to hear it expressed in somebody else’s odd, unexpected way.