Runnicles returns and scores (again) with Strauss
It was five years ago that Donald Runnicles made his belated Lyric Opera debut, conducting a riveting performance of Richard Strauss’s Elektra in which the unearthly sounds coming out of the orchestra pit proved even scarier and more mesmerizing than what was taking place on stage. (Of course, finger ever on the pulse, Lyric’s former management never invited him back.)
Happily, Runnicles returned to town Thursday night to lead more Strauss—this time at the other end of the Loop with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, his first downtown podium stand since 2016. The evening’s program may have looked pedestrian on paper, yet the outstanding performances provided an example of a first-class conductor inspiring the orchestra to their very best.
There was a fantastical thematic thread running through the selections, which led off with Beethoven’s Overture to The Creatures of Prometheus.
Beethoven’s curtain-raiser to his eponymous ballet score is among his most concise overtures but also one of his finest. From the taut dramatic punch of the opening chords, this was an exhilarating and ideally realized performance, with warmly blended tuttis, rollicking woodwinds and dazzlingly virtuosic strings in the main Allegro.
A versatile veteran of both the opera house and concert hall, Runnicles was music director and principal conductor of San Francisco Opera from 1992-2009 where he led a magnificent Ring cycle (at least musically) in 2011.
Devoting nearly half the evening to a 32-minute suite from Engelbert Humperdinck’s Hansel und Gretel may seem like a profligate waste of resources. But Runnicles’ affection for this score—one he has likely led countless times in the opera house— was manifest in Thursday night’s performance. Omar Abad’s suite doesn’t attempt a unified synthesis, instead rather clunkily compiling seven non-sequential excerpts from the opera.
Runnicles—a rare left-handed gun on the podium—underlined the Weber influences in Humperdinck’s opera, as with the Prelude in which the four horns floated a magical rendering of the “Evening Prayer.” Runnicles and the players served up a characterful account of this score bringing out its inherent gracious charm. The children’s playful dance (“Rallalala”) was aptly rambunctious, there was a spooky evocation of the forest with delicate pizzicatos, galumphing humor in the “Witch’s Waltz,” and the suite closed with a shimmering and majestic reprise of the prayer. The musicians delivered playing that was refined, spirited and sumptuous under Runnicles’ direction with even the grandest climaxes never turning strident or overbearing.
For all its popularity, Don Quixote is the Strauss tone poem that can raise doubts even among the composer’s admirers. Strauss’s Op.35 is a strange amalgam, hovering not entirely convincingly between orchestral showpiece and quasi-cello concerto; some of the programmatic bits in these “Fantastic Variations on a Theme of Knightly Character” feel slick and too clever by half.
What Don Quixote requires to work successfully is a cello soloist that can bring out the vein of humanity beneath the surface flash. And CSO principal John Sharp managed to do just that in his burnished and sensitive performance Thursday night.
This was not the most technically airtight reading one will ever hear, with a couple brief spots of errant intonation and one bow attack that went awry.
But Sharp delivered a warmhearted and beautifully played rendering of the delusional Knight of the Rueful Countenance. He was especially inspired in conveying the Don’s melancholy, as in the dialogue with Sancho Panza at the halfway mark. Sharp was at his finest in the concluding section, movingly rendering the knight’s death with a subtle vibrato, terraced dynamic range, and tender intimacy.
Runnicles employed a different stage layout for the Strauss with cellos inside and violas outside. That setup didn’t do the CSO’s new principal violist Teng Li any favors with her instrument facing the back wall. Even so, Li made the most of her supporting role as Sancho Panza with vital and energized playing. Associate concertmaster Stephanie Jeong made her presence felt as well, as Don Quixote morphs at times into an ersatz triple concerto.
Runnicles led a brilliant, richly colored performance, boldly bringing out Strauss’s bizarro onomatopoeia, as with an alarmingly querulous band of sheep and truculent marching penitents. The big-boned climaxes never turned soupy or overblown, although the wind machine got somewhat buried in the “Ride through the Air.” That apart, Runnicles’ balancing was impeccable with transparent textures that made every instrumental line audible, even in Strauss’s knottiest contrapuntal moments.
The program will be repeated 1:30 p.m. Friday and 7:30 p.m. Saturday. cso.org
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