For Sir Donald Runnicles, Strauss with the CSO ‘remains meaningful’

Like many major conductors, Sir Donald Runnicles has a coterie of ensembles that he likes to regularly revisit, and high on that list is the Chicago Symphony Orchestra. “Very much so,” he said. “Of course, it’s always a matter of availability during the season, but the Chicago Symphony is an orchestra with which I just love to work.”

The Scottish-born conductor, who turns 70 on Nov. 16, will make his latest return to the CSO for a set of concerts Oct. 24-26 featuring Richard Strauss’ 1897 tone poem, Don Quixote, Op. 35, with Principal Cello John Sharp as soloist representing the title character.

“I’ve conducted Richard Strauss before [with the CSO],” he said, “and it was with some trepidation that I did Strauss there, because I grew up on the iconic historic recordings not only of Georg Solti, but also Fritz Reiner. So coming to Chicago with Richard Strauss remains very meaningful.”

Runnicles doesn’t have that much time for guest conducting, because he holds a well-balanced triad of posts: general music director of the Deutsche Oper Berlin (since 2009), music director of the Grand Teton Music Festival in Jackson Hole, Wyoming (since 2005) and principal guest conductor of the Sydney Symphony Orchestra (since 2019).

“I’m not a symphony-orchestra collector,” he said. “It’s not how many positions can I amass. But these are complementary positions, and I personally prefer to have a full and fulfilling year with a small number of organizations, as opposed to a week here, a week there — a more peripatetic approach as a guest conductor.”

Indeed, for much of his career, he has taken this approach of concentrating on a few select posts. From 1992 through 2009, for example, he served as music director and principal conductor of the San Francisco Opera (one of this country’s top opera companies), and at more or less the same time he was principal guest conductor of the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra (2001-2022) and principal conductor of the Orchestra of St. Luke’s (2001-07).

The most prominent of Runnicles’ current positions is his post with the Deutsche Oper Berlin, where he will return in November to lead a series of productions, including Die Frau ohne Schatten (The Woman Without a Shadow), the completion of a Richard Strauss trilogy that included the composer’s Intermezzo and Arabella. “The relationship there flourishes,” he said. “It’s been a wonderful and very challenging time there. I say challenging, not only because it is very large opera company with a very large repertoire, as many as 35 different productions in a season, but also because we are one of three opera houses in Berlin, and that brings with it its own artistic and logistical challenges.”

“I’ve done the [Strauss] tone poems as long as I have been conducting professionally. They’re virtuosic, they’re challenging and they are so fulfilling. It’s 45 minutes of great classical music.” — Donald Runnicles

Unlike the major opera companies in the United States, many of which have pared back productions and struggle to regain the levels of attendance they enjoyed before the COVID-19 pandemic, audiences have largely returned in Germany. “Certainly in Berlin, we have very full houses,” Runnicles said. “It’s still actually driven by repertoire as well, and certain pieces [have] fuller [audiences] than others, depending on recognition. I’m frankly very impressed by the audience numbers, particularly in Berlin, where there are on a given night two or three operas being presented.” It helps, he added, that ticket prices are considerably cheaper in Germany than in the United States, because of government subsidies.

He is set to step down from his Deutsche Opera position in 2026, right after he takes over a new post as chief conductor of the Dresden Philharmonic, which will demand less of his schedule. “I feel it’s time,” he said. “I’m ready for some new challenges, and I’m ready to spend more time with my family in the States.” 

In the United States, his contract with the Grand Teton festival has been extended through 2029, which would mark a tenure of 23 years at that time. Not as old or as well established as, say, the Aspen Music Festival, which marked its 75th anniversary this past summer, the summer event has gained stature under Runnicles. “It’s quite a unique festival as far as it takes place in Jackson Hole, which is something of an alpine paradise,” he said. “Just the sheer setting of the festival,  the Walk Festival Hall sitting quite literally at the bottom of a mountain, is very special, indeed.”

Runnicles first came to Jackson Hole in 2004 or 2005 and discovered that it had a “really terrific orchestra,” made up of 250 rotating musicians from across North America, who each come for two to five weeks during the eight-week festival. He was soon named music director in a process that moved very quickly. “These have been or are great relationships that continue to grow the more you nourish them,” Runnicles said of his time in Jackson Hole and his other long-running posts past and present.

The conductor will be coming to Chicago after an early celebration of his upcoming 70th birthday during closing concerts at the Edinburgh International Festival in August, leading the opening of the Dresden Philharmonic’s season in early September and two weeks of performances with the Sydney Symphony.

As noted earlier, Strauss’ Don Quixote will anchor the CSO’s program. Both on opera and orchestral stages, Runnicles has regularly programmed Strauss’ music. “I love that repertoire, and I am continually in awe of his orchestration and his creativity,” he said. “I’ve done the tone poems as long as I have been conducting professionally. They’re virtuosic, they’re challenging and they are so fulfilling. It’s 45 minutes of great classical music.”

To supplement that work, Runnicles’ suggested highlights from Englebert Humperdinck’s 1891-92 opera, Hansel and Gretel, which he has long loved. “There is such glorious music in that score and the German conductor Rudolf Kempe made a wonderful suite featuring some of the opera’s finest music. I thought, and so did the Chicago Symphony, that this would be a good complement to the Richard Strauss.”

Strauss was as famous a conductor as he was a composer, and one of his favorite operas to lead was Hansel and Gretel — a “nice little detail” that Runnicles said provides an added connection between it and Don Quixote.

Launching the program is Ludwig van Beethoven’s overture to The Creatures of Prometheus, Op. 43, the composer’s only full-length ballet. Though perhaps not heard as often as it was some decades ago, the 1801 overture remains a staple of the orchestra repertoire. “It’s a wonderful beginning of a concert,” Runnicles said. “It takes you by the lapels, so to speak, from the very outset.”