[From the 8/24/04 www.sfcv.org Music News]

   It was a small, simple item in this column last week, about
   a small, simple quote from San Francisco Opera music director
   Donald Runnicles, expressing concern about the possibility
   of President Bush's re-election in November.  The response
   was rather like a yawn in this city, although Internet opera
   forums busied themselves discussing the propriety of a musician
   making a political statement.

   Then, over the weekend, came some big noise - including
   protests, threats of subscription and contribution cancelations
   - in and around the Atlanta Symphony, where Runnicles is
   principal guest conductor.  Under the headline "Symphony
   conductor out on limb politically," an Atlanta Journal-Constitution
   article by music critic Pierre Ruhe and reporter Tom Sabulis
   opened with: "Musicians with a political message can transform
   themselves into lightning rods."

   The total extent of Runnicles' remark in Austria's Der Standard
   was two sentences ("I will really ponder whether I should
   stay (in the US), if (President) Bush wins a second time.
   The American public can be wrong once, but if they re-elect
   him, that means they really want him."), but the Journal-Constitution
   did some digging into the conductor's history, showing that
   what we have here (yikes!) is a "musician with a political
   message."

   There was Runnicles' Berlin Philharmonic debut last year, the
   Atlantans write, "with the ASO Chorus in tow...  in Britten's
   War Requiem, a pacifist memorial to the dead but also a peace
   offering for the living.  Just before the concerts - with
   raging German antipathy towards U.S. foreign policy in Iraq
   - Runnicles said he saw the performance `as a sort of olive
   branch.  Where politicians can only be partisan, we as artists
   can make a bridge between peoples and find a common goal.'

   "In February, at Carnegie Hall with the Orchestra of St.
   Luke's, Runnicles organized and conducted an anti-war program
   titled `All a Poet Can Do is Warn.' With the ASO in May, he
   led Aaron Kernis' Symphony No. 2, a pessimistic vision of
   violence and retribution, prompted by the first Persian Gulf
   War in 1991.  `Artists have the privilege of warning,' Runnicles
   said at the time about programming the Kernis.  `I want to
   make a big statement about war, but I don't want to hijack
   the ASO audience to make that statement.  As an artist I can
   do that in programming.  I believe it's the right thing to
   do.'"

   Atlanta Symphony officials expressed careful optimism that
   the "damage" will be limited.  Said the executive VP of the
   Woodruff Arts Center: "I think most of our supporters are
   pretty sophisticated about these things, they know artistic
   temperaments." The board president said, "Fortunately for
   Atlanta, making great music takes precedence over political
   punditry.  We certainly have a diverse group of listeners in
   our audience...  Republicans and Democrats and Libertarians
   and apolitical people.  Our focus, of course, is the mission
   of the music.  I think our fans come to hear the music," he
   said, "and whether the people producing the music and those
   associated with the institution are black, white, Christian,
   Jew, Republican or Democrat is irrelevant." He said nothing
   of Scots.

   Runnicles' next Atlanta appearance is in January, when, says
   the article by Ruhe and Sabulis, "he'll again dip into music
   by politically aware composers, including Peter Maxwell Davies
   (who charmingly promotes Scottish nationalism by using bagpipes
   in an orchestral setting) and Beethoven, who dedicated a
   symphony to Napoleon, only to scratch the tyrant's name off
   the title page when he crowned himself emperor."

Janos Gereben
www.sfcv.org
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