As I was walking to my car from Memorial Hall last night, I overheard a couple of people talking about the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra’s concert. One said that she couldn’t remember his name, but that the conductor was English and she liked him.
Me: He’s Scottish and his name is Donald Runnicles.
Woman: He’s Scottish? Not English?
Me: Yep.
Woman: I like him even better!
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I originally wasn’t going to attend the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra’s season finale because there was only a little over 20 minutes of music on the program that I wanted to hear. It took me roughly that long just to drive to Symphony Hall with all of the extra traffic in my neighborhood due to VaHi’s Summerfest. I ended up with an extra ticket to exchange, though, so I decided to come to this for three reasons. First, there was a world premier and, sadly, world premiers are often also the world finales of many wonderful works of music. Secondly, I really love the sea interludes from Britten’s “Peter Grimes” and suspected that Spano was likely to do a really good job with them. And, finally, my ticket for this evening also granted entry to the chamber concert this past Thursday.
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