Sir Donald Runnicles
The award of a knighthood to Donald Runnicles is a splendid achievement for my old school friend. When Donald joined our class in Senior School at George Watson’s Boys College, Edinburgh, from George Heriot’s in the late 60s, little did we know that we were to become classmates with Scotland’s finest conductor since Alexander Gibson. Why he moved from our arch-rival school is lost in the mists of time (but might be a question I can ask him), but it was a move that was to prove beneficial to many of us.
At that time, Watson’s had a thriving Music Department and the futuristic Music School designed by Michael Laird had recently opened. Unknown to anyone at the time, the money for the Music School had been provided by John Martin, who had left the school in 1948. Bizarrely, I knew John Martin, a very nice old man whom my father used to visit as his elder at St Catherine’s Argyle Church in Grange Road. He lived in a pleasant, unremarkable house on Strathearn Road, and when a few years later, he discovered that I wanted to be a singer, he donated me all his precious vocal scores of the Wagner operas, scores I have treasured ever since, as they date from the turn of the 19th and 20th century. No one had any idea that he was enormously rich and was to donate millions to George Watson’s.
Donald quickly immersed himself in music at the school and was already an accomplished pianist by the time he sat his Highers. We were all influenced by the excellent music teacher, Richard Telfer, who had for many years played the cinema organs in Edinburgh and was one of the founders of Scottish Opera in 1962. Dick realised that several of us were interested in classical music, particularly late Romantics like Bruckner, Mahler and Wagner, and helped us get summer jobs in the Assembly Hall on the Mound during the EIF and free tickets for many concerts. He also arranged for us to go through to Glasgow to watch and be overwhelmed by the first Scottish ‘Ring’ Cycle of Wagner, and thus inspired both myself and Donald to become professional musicians. There were several of us from that year at school who played tennis and golf together with Donald, as well as made music, and many of us are still in reasonably close contact.
Donald was obviously the most advanced and the finest musician, and also the most visionary, as he founded his own orchestra, the Caritas (from the Watson’s motto, Ex Corde Caritas) in his final years at school, with him conducting. An amusing quirk, which was evident even then, was that Donald was very left-handed, and so it was that his conducting style evolved into the very rare dominant left hand which makes him unusual to this day.
After leaving school, Donald studied music at Edinburgh University with further studies at St John’s College, Cambridge. More studies at the London Opera Centre resulted in him being offered a post as a repetiteur for the ballet at Mannheim Opera in Germany. Once he had a foot in the door at the ballet, it quickly became apparent that conducting opera was his forte, and he speedily became assistant conductor, and his success there led to him becoming General Music Director of the Freiburg Opera in 1989. Freiburg is a lovely city in southern Germany with a good reputation as a place to make a mark. Donald made his mark superbly well, and soon offers were coming in from seriously important places. He was invited to conduct at the Bayreuth Festival (the pinnacle for all Wagner fans), and in 1988, he stood in at very short notice at New York’s Metropolitan Opera for an indisposed James Levine to conduct ‘Lulu’. This was his big break in the USA and, in 1992, he became Music Director and Principal Conductor of the San Francisco Opera. His position as one of the world’s foremost conductors was established. For the next decade and a half, he conducted all over the United States and worldwide, although shockingly rarely in the United Kingdom.
He took over as Principal Conductor of the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra in 2009 at the end of his San Francisco contract, and his return to Scotland was celebrated by his friends and fans. I had bumped into him only once, at the Bayreuth Festival, in the early 90s, where I had won a scholarship from the Wagner Society to attend three performances at the Festival (see “A Singer’s Life” Part 18) and we had a brief reunion. His deliberate exile from Britain meant he had lost track of my career, but once back with the BBCSSO, we met up often, during the EIF, for drinks and chat. I invited him over to our house in Murrayfield for a very jolly reunion of many of his old schoolmates and there was much to talk about, and much praise to give him. I was only able to sing with Donald once in my career, at a BBC Prom in the Albert Hall of Wagner’s ‘Tannhäuser’, but it was a very emotional experience for me.
In 2009, he became Generalmusikdirektor of the Deutsche Oper Berlin, one of the most prestigious posts in all world opera, and he holds that post to this day. He is also director of the Grand Teton Music Festival in Jackson Hole, Wyoming USA, where he lives when not in Berlin. He is Conductor Emeritus of the BBC SSO and holds an Honorary Doctorate from the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland, as well as an Honorary Fellowship from the Royal Society of Edinburgh.
The announcement of his knighthood is warmly welcomed by his friends and colleagues, and it is therefore all the more bizarre that he has never conducted at the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden. Now it may be that busy schedules have not made such an appearance possible, but this hole in his career resumé should be filled sooner rather than later, in my opinion. He is only a year older than me, and conductors famously go on for ever, so I hope he will be invited to conduct at this wonderful opera house in the near future. Readers will know how much I love Covent Garden (see “A Singer’s Life” – various parts) and I hope we will see Sir Donald there soon!
Celebrating famous Scottish musicians is a rare thing, and we should all feel rightly proud of Donald. I hope he returns to conduct here again soon, and I know that the Edinburgh Music Review will be there to welcome his return.
