Runnicles is to depart

The news that Donald Runnicles is to resign as chief conductor of the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra in  2016 is alarming but hardly surprising.

By then - indeed by 2015  -  BBC Radio Three will have a new administrator whose task is expected to include orchestral cutbacks of various sorts. Since the BBC SSO has always been in the firing line for such things - in the 1970s it was faced, not for the first time, with disbandment - the question is bound to be asked: is the old threat about to surface again?

It was on that occasion in the seventies that Hans Keller, the BBC’s resident musical pundit, accused me of being a “sinister” critic. Considering how sinister he could be himself, this seemed a bit rich. But when a fine orchestra - much finer now than it was then - stands in danger, we need to give it all our support.

Maybe the danger will pass, but we must be watchful. The closing concert of this year’s Edinburgh Festival, in which Ilan Volkov conducted the BBC SSO in an exhilarating performance of Janacek’s Glagolitic Mass, stood out as something very special.  Even if no more than the orchestra’s repertoire is likely to be interfered with, it is more than enough.

Tomorrow (Thursday) in Glasgow, Runnicles himself is conducting what promises to be a sensational semi-staging  of Berg’s Wozzeck with the BBC SSO at the City Hall. The last time this twentieth-century masterpieces was performed in Scotland was by Scottish Opera more than thirty years ago.

And what is Scottish Opera doing at the moment?  (read Richard Morrison’s piece in The Times this week). The BBC SSO, now in top form, requires our backing. The forthcoming departure of Donald Runnicles can only be regarded as ominous.

22 October 2014