Edinburgh Festival
Christopher Lambton
Every time I have heard Ravel’s Piano Concerto for the Left Hand, some wiseacre in the bar afterwards trots out the predictable joke that it’s a cheap concert as the pianist gets only half the fee. For all that this is obviously nonsense, most pianists go on to play a two-handed encore to set the record straight. Yuja Wang, in her Edinburgh Festival concert with the Oslo Philharmonic Orchestra, chose to play a whole other piano concerto, in this case the same composer's G major.The two concertos required a change of costume for our flamboyant soloist, from shimmering purple to sunset yellow ( Read more ...
Christopher Lambton
A performance of Olivier Messiaen’s kaleidoscopic Turangalîla-Symphonie is always going to be a bit of an event. The Edinburgh International Festival set this one up nicely by making it not only the impressive culmination of a four-concert residency by the London Symphony Orchestra, but also the centrepiece of a group of Messiaen-themed performances.These included a separate concert, earlier in the evening, which juxtaposed Debussy’s La Mer and Milhaud’s La création du monde in a programme described as The Road to Turangalîla, and the previous day a performance of Messiaen’s Quartet for the Read more ...
David Kettle
A toy car – in fact, a mobile home with comically enormous antenna on top – shudders over arms and shoulders as if they were mountain ranges. A colossal polar bear comforts its curious cub. A lifesize puppet grandmother is chased up and down stairs by her over-enthusiastic stairlift.There’s a lot of humour, and of exquisite beauty, in this brief, ephemeral collaboration between two Belgian puppetry and mime companies, Focus and Challiwaté, at the International Festival. The overarching narrative – such as it is – involves a trio of characters (maybe reporters, possibly archivers, at least Read more ...
Simon Thompson
This concert, the Edinburgh International Festival debut of the Castalian Quartet, almost didn’t happen due to the illness of their second violin, Daniel Roberts. Then, a couple of days ago, in stepped Yume Fujise, leader of the Kleio Quartet, to save the day, which is no mean feat considering that this programme featured both a world premiere and the knottiest of Beethoven’s late quartets.She did a terrific job, though (Fujise pictured below), as did the other three. In fact, they built the programme around that premiere, Mark-Anthony Turnage’s Awake. Turnage’s inspiration came from Read more ...
Simon Thompson
The Edinburgh International Festival’s focus on Korea moves to the Queen’s Hall in the festival’s middle week, with performances from two Korean soloists playing alone.Yeol Eum Son has already made waves in Scotland, and she chose some meaty repertoire for her EIF debut, culminating in Beethoven’s mighty Hammerklavier Sonata (★★★★). For the first half of her Tuesday morning programme, however, she played Liszt’s Ninth Transcendental Étude alongside three set of variations by Bizet, Czerny and Alkan. Variations are a neat choice for an artist because the variety intrinsic to the form gives Read more ...
Simon Thompson
The National Youth Choir of Scotland have the most easily pronounceable acronym in Scottish music: everyone up here knows who you’re talking about when you mention NYCOS.They’ve been going from strength to strength under their Artistic Director, Christopher Bell, and their Edinburgh International Festival concert with the Royal Scottish National Orchestra (★★★★★) showcased two very different sides of their considerable skills.The first thing you noticed in their performance of Britten’s Rejoice in the Lamb was the clarity of their articulation of what is a very chewy text, but they turned Read more ...
Simon Thompson
There’s a Korean strain to the Edinburgh International Festival’s programme this year, more in the drama programme than in the music one, but it came to the Usher Hall in Friday night’s concert from the KBS Symphony Orchestra (★★★★). They play a similar role in Korea to what the BBC Orchestras do in the UK (KBS stands for Korean Broadcasting System) and if this concert is anything to go by then they’re a jolly impressive bunch of musicians.Their overall sound was full of confidence, with a golden glow to the brass and a bright sheen to the strings. That came in very useful in illuminating the Read more ...
Simon Thompson
You’d feel short-changed if an orchestra like the Budapest Festival Orchestra came to the Edinburgh Festival and didn’t play some Hungarian music, so why not put together a whole concert of the stuff? The musicians of the BFO are fiercely proud of their Hungarian heritage, and do a lot of work in local communities, so in many senses they are natural heirs to the heritage of Bartók and Kodály, which made them perfect composers for the middle night of their Edinburgh International Festival residency (★★★★★).And, oh, how naturally they play them! They were joined for Bartók’s Third Piano Read more ...
Simon Thompson
It’s an everyday story of festival folk. The festival’s Queen’s Hall concert on Wednesday morning was meant to be a song recital from Günther Groissböck, but he cancelled at (I’m told very) short notice due to illness and the festival team had to scrabble around to find a replacement pronto.Luckily, Edinburgh hosts several good singers at this time of year, not least thanks to the fact that the Scottish Chamber Orchestra are rehearsing The Magic Flute for this weekend. Step forward Turkish tenor Ilker Arcayürek, who will sing Tamino on Saturday. He stepped into the breach to sing alongside Read more ...
Simon Thompson
And we’re off! This concert marked the beginning not just of the 2023 Edinburgh International Festival but, perhaps more importantly, of Nicola Benedetti’s tenure in charge as the EIF’s Director. She came onstage for a chat before a note of music was played. Part of her mission as director appears to be to make the arts more accessible, and if her introductory chat wasn’t much more than a gentle hello then it still did the job. Any aim to demystify classical music has to be welcomed.That brief seems to have been passed on to violinist Stefan Jackiw, the artist around whom this programme Read more ...
David Kettle
The Death and Life of All of Us, Summerhall ★★★★Victor Esses was 16 when he first discovered his grandmother had a sister – someone the family had never discussed. It was just a year after his own first illicit visit to a gay sauna.Esses’s deceptively slight show – just him, a couple of microphones, some clips of video interviews and characterful musical contributions from guitarist Enrico Aurigemma – might begin as something of a whodunnit mystery tale, as Esses tracks down the mysterious elderly woman to a golf club outside Rome. But it quickly moves on to profounder – and, Read more ...
Christopher Lambton
For the penultimate concert in the Philadelphia Orchestra’s residency at the Edinburgh Festival, the chosen repertoire was evidently considered so obscure that the box office managers didn’t even try to sell any tickets in the Usher Hall’s cavernous upper circle. To shut off nearly half the concert hall for a world class orchestra that has crossed the Atlantic shows either a healthy disregard for the fickleness of audience taste, or a near suicidal disinterest in box office revenue.That, you could say, is what festivals are all about, an approach that might have found some justification in a Read more ...