A familiar face on the podium of the Berliner Philharmoniker

November 29, 4:13 PMSF Classical Music ExaminerStephen Smoliar

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Donald Runnicles (courtesy of San Francisco Opera, Ken Friedman, and Johannes
Ifkovits, from the Official Web site of Donald Runnicles)

Those who cannot wait until next June to hear Donald Runnicles, when he returns to the San Francisco Opera to conduct Richard Wagner's Die Walküre, will have a chance to hear him perform "something completely different" through the virtues of the Digital Concert Hall.  In his capacity as Principal Guest Conductor of the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra (ASO), he and the ASO Chorus (Director Norman Mackenzie) will perform with the Berliner Philharmoniker for the third time in six years in December at the Berlin Philharmonie. They will travel to Berlin for three performances of Johannes Brahms’s A German Requiem on Friday, December 18, Saturday, December 19 and Sunday, December 20, 2009. Soprano Genia Kühmeier and bass-baritone Gerald Finley will be the soloists.  Finley is, of course, also familiar to San Francisco, particularly for his performance of J. Robert Oppenheimer in the world premiere of Doctor Atomic by John Adams.

The concert on Sunday, December 20 will be webcast live through the Berliner Philharmoniker’s Digital Concert Hall 11AM PST. Tickets for the live webcast cost 9.90 Euros, approx US$15. Tickets and more information about the Digital Concert Hall are available at www.berliner-philharmoniker.de/dch.  The concert may then be viewed through the Digital Concert Hall archive shortly thereafter.

Runnicles and the ASO Chorus made their debut with the Berliner Philharmoniker in December 2003 performing Benjamin Britten’s War Requiem. Following the performance, Der Tagesspiegel wrote: “The world has really turned a bit topsy-turvy when our fabulous Berliner Philharmoniker turn around in their orchestra seats to applaud an American amateur chorus.” Runnicles and the ASO Chorus were invited back in May 2008 to sing the Berlioz Requiem.  San Francisco Opera audience know that Runnicles is no stranger to the repertoire of Britten operas, and we last had a taste of his Berlioz in the production of La Damnation de Faust in the spring of 2003.  We are less likely to be familiar with his Brahms.  In light of the aesthetic tension between Wagner and Brahms, I look forward to the opportunity to assess whether, like the Berliner Philharmoniker's director, Sir Simon Rattle, he is equally at home on both sides of the opposition.

The Berlin concerts will also feature the premiere of a new harp concerto by Shane Currier called "Traces" with Marie-Pierre Langlamet as soloist. The work was commissioned jointly by the Stiftung Berliner Philharmoniker and the Grand Teton Music Festival of which Runnicles is the Music Director.  The Digital Concert Hall project is made possible with the generous support of Deutsche Bank.