[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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