Scottish conductor Donald Runnicles is busy with leadership positions in the opera and symphonic worlds in Germany, Scotland, and America. WRTI’s Susan Lewis profiles Runnicles, who is also a regular guest conductor with The Philadelphia Orchestra.
On Sunday, July 24 at 1 pm on WRTI, Donald Runnicles conducts The Philadelphia Orchestra in a program featuring the music of Beethoven, Elgar and Brahms.
Radio Script:
MUSIC: Mahler’s Symphony No. 2, conducted by Leonard Bernstein
Susan Lewis: He was a young man when he had a transformative encounter with Mahler’s Symphony No. 2. Donald Runnicles was selling programs in Scottland’s Usher Hall.
Donald Runnicles: I had the chance to sit on the steps...and there was Lenny Bernstein and I experienced the miracle, the magic of this remarkable renaissance musician. He was famous for those leaps. In that moment, you really thought this is being composed as we are present...and I knew then I wanted to be a conductor.
SL: Runnicles wrote his university thesis on Mahler, and began his career working in opera in London and Germany. Today, whether conducting opera or symphonic works, the human voice and how a phrase might be sung, informs his approach. Think of Beethoven, Elgar, or Brahms.
DR: It sounds like a cliché, but there are so many moments that sound like songs without words...where would I breathe in a phrase, even if it’s instrumental? Where would the violinist breathe? There’s very often an artificial divide between orchestral conductors and opera conductors, but I believe there is no divide.
SL: Today, Runnicles leads the DeutscheOper in Berlin, the BBC Scottish Symphony, the Grand Teton Music Festival, and is principal guest conductor of the Atlanta Symphony.
