Donald Runnicles first encountered the music of Gustav Mahler when he was a young music student in Edinburgh.
“I was immersed in the music of Richard Wagner,” the music director of the Grand Teton Music Festival recounted recently. “Not just the music of Wagner but in German culture. That’s when I began to read about composers like Bruckner and Mahler.”
Then, at age 17 or 18, he attended performances of Mahler’s Symphony No. 1 and, auspiciously, one of his Second, that one with Leonard Bernstein leading the London Symphony Orchestra.
“That for me was life changing,” he said, and he began to dream of one day conducting Mahler’s Second himself.
Fifty years on, he not only has done so, but he’s had directed all but the seventh of the Bohemian-born composer’s 10 symphonies.
“It’s not just the music,” said Runnicles — Sir Donald Runnicles, since being knighted in 2020. “It is a sound world. … Every symphony is this epic work of beauty, struggle, aspiration.”
This weekend, Runnicles will lead the Grand Teton Festival Orchestra in Mahler’s Fifth, paired with the 88th symphony of Mahler’s fellow Viennese, Josef Haydn.
