2008-09 Season Preview
INTERNATIONALLY ACCLAIMED CONDUCTOR DONALD RUNNICLES LEADS HIS 20TH SEASON AS MUSIC DIRECTOR OF THE SAN FRANCISCO OPERA, OPENING WITH VERDI’S SIMON BOCCANEGRA ON SEPTEMBER 5, AND ALSO LEADING SFO’S TRAVIATA, DIE TOTE STADT, IDOMENEO, AND THE VERDI REQUIEM
MR. RUNNICLES RETURNS TO ATLANTA SYMPHONY FOR FOUR WEEKS OF CONCERTS AND A TELARC RECORDING – AND TO BERLIN, LONDON, PHILADELPHIA, ROME, AND THE CITY WHERE IT ALL BEGAN – MANNHEIM, GERMANY, TO CELEBRATE THE 30TH ANNIVERSARY OF HIS CONDUCTING CAREER
2008-09 ALSO INCLUDES PERFORMANCES WITH THE BBC SCOTTISH SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA AND STOPS IN DENMARK AND SWITZERLAND
On September 5, Donald Runnicles opens the 2008-09 season of San Francisco Opera – of which he has been music director since 1992 – conducting Verdi’s Simon Boccanegra. Next season he takes the reins of both the Deutsche Oper Berlin and the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra. He is also music director of the Grand Teton Music Festival and principal guest conductor of the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra – to which he devotes four weeks of programming in 2008-09, in addition to making a second recording of music by Richard Strauss with the ASO and Christine Brewer for Telarc. His ASO recording of Henryk Górecki’s haunting Symphony No. 3, made last year, will be released by Telarc later this season.
Mr. Runnicles leads four productions at San Francisco Opera this season in addition to Simon Boccanegra – Korngold’s Die tote Stadt, Mozart’s Idomeneo, and Verdi’s Requiem and La traviata, leaving him time to return to the podiums of the Philadelphia Orchestra and Berlin’s Deutsches Symphonie Orchester, as well as the BBC Scottish Symphony and London Symphony Orchestras, among other engagements. He guest-conducts the Geneva Opera (with Britten’s Peter Grimes), Rome’s Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia, and Copenhagen’s Tivoli Concerts, and he is honored by the city of Mannheim, Germany, for the 30th anniversary of his conducting debut there. Soloists with whom Mr. Runnicles is working this season include percussionist Dame Evelyn Glennie; sopranos Christine Brewer, Soile Isokoski, and Nina Stemme; violinist Christian Tetzlaff; pianists Radu Lupu and Shai Wosner; and the stars of his San Francisco Opera productions, such as Anna Netrebko and Dmitri Hvorostovsky.
As he prepares to spend larger blocks of time conducting orchestral concerts in the coming years, Mr. Runnicles has chosen his concert repertoire for the season with care, without abandoning opera. His affinity for Viennese music manifests itself in several performances of Webern’s Im Sommerwind (Mannheim, Philadelphia, and Atlanta) and Mahler’s First and Sixth Symphonies, along with the Adagio of the Tenth. For his return to Berlin’s Deutsches Symphonie Orchester, Mr. Runnicles will conduct Webern, Berg, and Mahler, with soprano Soile Isokoski performing Berg’s Seven Early Songs.
Richard Strauss is represented by his Alpine Symphony (Rome and Atlanta), and by scenes from Die Frau ohne Schatten, Salome, Capriccio, and Elektra (Atlanta, with Christine Brewer and Eric Owens). Mr. Runnicles and Ms. Brewer record a second CD of Strauss while in Atlanta, for the Telarc label. The first received rave reviews, including this one from ClassicsToday:
Runnicles leads this fine program of shadowy, late-Romantic music with an assured hand. His Prelude to Tristan und Isolde is taken very broadly and with just the right feeling of desire ... . The [Atlanta Symphony] Orchestra’s performance of Tod und Verklärung is spectacular. In a score that loves to show off its lushness, Runnicles highlights not only that luxuriance, but fills it with vigor, intensity, grandeur, and, simply, beauty – just listen to the gorgeous oboe solo near the start. ... The transfiguration theme is presented near the end with utter ease and dignity. ... Runnicles’ reading [of the Four Last Songs] is ravishing.
In Aberdeen, Scotland, Maestro Runnicles has programmed both Berlioz’s Symphonie fantastique and Slonimsky’s Earbox, by John Adams, whose opera Doctor Atomic Mr. Runnicles introduced to the world in San Francisco. The Geneva Opera has invited him to lead Britten’s Peter Grimes, the work of his successful return to the Metropolitan Opera last season. Geneva audiences are in for superb performances: the performances of Grimes were among the best-reviewed of the season, and the international high-definition transmission was one of the most successful of the company’s second season of HD broadcasts. The New Yorker wrote:
A gripping performance … Donald Runnicles, the conductor, drew grandiose, almost Wagnerian sounds from the orchestra … Runnicles showed an instinctive understanding of Britten’s tempos and idiom; in particular, he conjured the wide-open, lonesome atmosphere that was partly missing from Doyle’s staging.
New York magazine reported: "With Donald Runnicles conducting, a gorgeous, shiny sound geysers up from the Met orchestra." Variety observed: "Under Donald Runnicles’ baton, the Met orchestra makes the sun, the sea, and the tragedy come alive." Even the New York Times was impressed: "The veteran conductor Donald Runnicles drew a richly colorful and impassioned account of the score from the orchestra." And the Boston Globe, not to be outdone, wrote:
Conductor Donald Runnicles drew an inspired performance from the Met Orchestra, full of passion and commitment, yet free of bombast. Without slackening the dramatic tension, he found ways of drawing out both the music’s austere lyricism and its violent extremes.
The 2009 spring-season Tivoli Concerts in Copenhagen welcome Mr. Runnicles and soprano Nina Stemme for the finales of two of Wagner’s "Ring" operas (Siegfried and Götterdämmerung), which the conductor will be leading in their entirety over the next few seasons at the San Francisco Opera, completing the "Ring" that opened there in 2007.
Glenn Petry
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