Runnicles does it again
The BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra’s Sunday afternoon concerts in Edinburgh are gaining the status of Festival events. To celebrate the 60th birthday of its principal conductor, the Edinburgh-born Donald Runnicles, this week, the players were teamed with the Festival Chorus for what was clearly a very special performance of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony.
The Usher Hall was packed. Runnicles made an introductory address from the podium telling the audience that as an adolescent he sang in the chorus’s debut performance of Mahler’s Eighth Symphony in 1965 with Alexander Gibson as conductor.
Since then he has held major appointments in Berlin and San Francisco and has given riveting performances of Britten’s Peter Grimes at the New York Metropolitan (available on DVD and highly recommended). Regretfully, because it clashed with a family birthday, I did not attend this week’s Beethoven, which has been recorded for television.
But there is more ahead. In February, in tribute to Sibelius’s 150th birthday, Sibelius’s Seventh Symphony and Violin Concerto will be performed by the BBC SSO at the Usher Hall, with Guy Braunstein as soloist, flanked by Beethoven’s Coriolanus and Leonora No 3 overtures.
We must make the most of Runnicles while we have him. Scottish Opera should have sought his services years ago, but can now presumably no longer afford him. And what has the RSNO, for which he once sold programmes at the Usher Hall, specially done on his behalf?
For the SCO he has conducted a memorable account of Schoenberg’s Transfigured Night. But it is sad to think how many opportunities to hear Runnicles in Scotland have been lost. It is significant that a Scottish blog was founded some years ago under the name “Where’s Runnicles?” When he leaves the BBC SSO in 2016, we must be ready to say, very assertively, haste ye back.
18 November 2014
The BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra’s Sunday afternoon concerts in Edinburgh are gaining the status of Festival events. To celebrate the 60th birthday of its principal conductor, the Edinburgh-born Donald Runnicles, this week, the players were teamed with the Festival Chorus for what was clearly a very special performance of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony.
The Usher Hall was packed. Runnicles made an introductory address from the podium telling the audience that as an adolescent he sang in the chorus’s debut performance of Mahler’s Eighth Symphony in 1965 with Alexander Gibson as conductor.
Since then he has held major appointments in Berlin and San Francisco and has given riveting performances of Britten’s Peter Grimes at the New York Metropolitan (available on DVD and highly recommended). Regretfully, because it clashed with a family birthday, I did not attend this week’s Beethoven, which has been recorded for television.
But there is more ahead. In February, in tribute to Sibelius’s 150th birthday, Sibelius’s Seventh Symphony and Violin Concerto will be performed by the BBC SSO at the Usher Hall, with Guy Braunstein as soloist, flanked by Beethoven’s Coriolanus and Leonora No 3 overtures.
We must make the most of Runnicles while we have him. Scottish Opera should have sought his services years ago, but can now presumably no longer afford him. And what has the RSNO, for which he once sold programmes at the Usher Hall, specially done on his behalf?
For the SCO he has conducted a memorable account of Schoenberg’s Transfigured Night. But it is sad to think how many opportunities to hear Runnicles in Scotland have been lost. It is significant that a Scottish blog was founded some years ago under the name “Where’s Runnicles?” When he leaves the BBC SSO in 2016, we must be ready to say, very assertively, haste ye back.
18 November 2014
Donald Runnicles departure from music in Scotland is indeed sad, although one hopes he will return from time to time. Equally sad - and surely an indictment of the powers-that-then-were, as CW points out, is the lack of opportunity Scottish audiences had of hearing him over the last few decades when his career was blooming in more major musical centres. He was the ideal conductor to assume and develop Sir Alexander Gibson's legacy. Others clearly thought otherwise.
ReplyDeleteFew readers have probably heard of the Grand Teton Music Festival which is one of Runnicles present appointments. I had the privilege of visiting it in its early years when its then MD Ling Tung was in charge. The magnificence of the setting is just glorious. In Tung's day, he would invite top musicians from most of the major US orchestras to make up the Grand Teton Festival Ensemble. So he would have up to 7 or 8 concertmasters in his first violin section! This tradition continues, and I note that the Festival now includes musicians from the New York Phil, the Metropolitan Opera, San Francisco Symphony and 19 others.
Tung was able to do this through an astute business decision. A Chinese-born American from a distinguished Shanghai musical family, Tung had married an American from an allegedly wealthy family. Together they saw an opportunity to make money by developing the young Festival based in Jackson Hole through the building of a large ski ledge (and latterly a splendid concert hall). Empty in the sumer, it was the logical place to house a hundred or so musicians and their families. Accommodation was provided free along with a small weekly stipend. The musicians therefore enjoyed an inexpensive and fulfilling family holiday over 5 weeks, had to perform in only 5 major concerts and as much chamber music as they wished. In return, Tung got a first-rate ensemble.
Tung had been appointed as MD of the Hong Kong Philharmonic just prior to my appointment as General Manager. Whilst he may have been effective in front of freelance orchestras made up of the finest orchestral musicians, he proved to be far less so in charge of a full-time orchestra. His tenure was an unhappy one and his contract was not renewed after three years.
The Gand Teton Festival continued to flourish, though. Tung retired as MD in 1996.