‘Epic’ season opens with Beethoven’s 9th — JH News&Guide

The word “epic” came up many times as Sir Donald Runnicles talked Thursday morning in his office backstage at Walk Festival Hall.

“Epic in so far as big titles,” the music director of the Grand Teton Music Festival said of the past 10 months since concluding the organization’s 63rd season last August.

He invoked the word again talking about the opening concerts of GTMF’s 2025 summer.

“Talk about epic,” he said of Beethoven’s Symphony No. 9, the work that will be featured Thursday and Saturday in the hall in Teton Village.

The Grand Teton Festival Orchestra reconvenes for eight weeks, with guest soloists, ensembles and conductors, symphonic works and plenty of chamber music, much-loved repertoire as well as new compositions, and plenty more for music appreciators of all stripes.

Since the early 1960s, GTMF has brought together some of the finest classical musicians from North America and farther abroad to constitute a summer orchestra at the base of the Tetons. Runnicles has set the programs and conducted the orchestra since 2005.

“Home is in Berlin, where we spend most of our time,” the Scotsman said of his family. “But this is also our home.”

And when your work takes you all around the world for much of the year, it’s good to have a place to call home. Just the day before, Runnicles had arrived in Jackson Hole from Australia. He is principal guest conductor of the Sydney Symphony Orchestra, spending two, two-week stretches there each year. He and the orchestra had just performed Strauss’ “Ein Heldenleben” and are in the midst of a Brahms symphony cycle.

Equally “epic” has been Runnicles’ blizzard of activity in Germany, where he is preparing to wind down 17 years as music director of the Deutsche Oper Berlin with two complete Wagner Ring Cycles, and where he conducted his first concerts as chief conductor designate of the Dresden Philharmonic.

“One of the most memorable concerts I’ve had the privilege of giving was in Dresden on the day the firebombing is commemorated,” he said. “I conducted Britten’s ‘War Requiem’ … which was very poignant.”

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