Edinburgh Festival
Orpheus and Eurydice, Opera Queensland/SCO, Edinburgh International Festival 2025 review - dazzling, but distractingThursday, 14 August 2025
There’s a lot to shout about in this Orpheus, especially the way it looks. In a thin year for staged opera at the Edinburgh International Festival, they’ve gone for an eye-popper with this staging of Gluck’s most influential work. Premiering at... Read more... |
Elschenbroich, Grynyuk / Fibonacci Quartet, Edinburgh International Festival 2025 review - mahogany Brahms and explosive JanáčekWednesday, 13 August 2025
Leonard Elschenbroich and Alexei Grynyuk crafted a fine programme for their EIF recital, centring around Brahms’ relationship with the Schumanns. He famously met them in 1853, when Robert Schumann declared him the next great thing in German music.... Read more... |
Budapest Festival Orchestra, Iván Fischer, Edinburgh International Festival 2025 review - mania and menuetsMonday, 11 August 2025
Fresh from their triumph at the Proms, the Budapest Festival Orchestra arrived at the Edinburgh International Festival with a programme that centred on dance, and culminated in as fine a performance of Bartók’s Miraculous Mandarin (the complete... Read more... |
Tom at the Farm, Edinburgh Fringe 2025 review - desire and disgustMonday, 11 August 2025
As shockingly beautiful as it is horrifyingly brutal, actor Armando Babaioff’s deeply Brazilian adaptation of thriller Tom at the Farm leaves a rancid taste in the mouth and harrowing images seared on the retina. It’s a show to shock and provoke,... Read more... |
Works and Days, Edinburgh International Festival 2025 review - jaw-dropping theatrical ambitionSunday, 10 August 2025
With the sheer density of theatrical creations jostling for attention across Edinburgh’s festivals, there’s no shortage of arresting stagings, innovative visuals and powerful, memorable design. (Just take Cena Brasil Internacional’s shocking Tom at... Read more... |
Kolesnikov, Tsoy / Liu, NCPA Orchestra, Chung, Edinburgh International Festival 2025 review - transfigured playing and heavenly desireFriday, 08 August 2025
Say what you like about this year’s slimmer-than-usual Edinburgh International Festival, but when it has hit the spot, it has done so triumphantly. Nowhere has that so far been truer than in the piano playing, as this pair of concerts demonstrated.... Read more... |
Weilerstein, NYO2, Payare / Dueñas, Malofeev, Edinburgh International Festival 2025 review - youthful energy and emotional intensityWednesday, 06 August 2025
NYO2 is a group of dazzlingly talented (and terrifyingly young-looking) 14-17 year olds from the USA, one of Carnegie Hall’s three national youth ensembles, and with a focus on supporting young musicians from communities that are under-represented... Read more... |
Make It Happen, Edinburgh International Festival 2025 review - tutting at naughtinessMonday, 04 August 2025
You could distinctly hear the murmurs of recognition from the Edinburgh audience – responding to knowing mentions of the city’s Leith and Morningside areas, the building of Royal Bank of Scotland’s immense Gogarburn HQ, the institution’s towering... Read more... |
Verdi's Requiem / Capriccio, Edinburgh International Festival 2024 review - words, music, judgementTuesday, 27 August 2024
The Philharmonia’s residency was the centrepiece of the Edinburgh International Festival’s final weekend, and it’s right that the orchestra should be the focus because they were consistently the finest thing about both their Verdi Requiem and their... Read more... |
Fire in my mouth, Philharmonia, NYCOS, Alsop, Edinburgh International Festival 2024 review - total work of art for our timesSaturday, 24 August 2024
Commissioned by the New York Philharmonic and premiered in 2018, Julia Wolfe’s Fire in my mouth is a multi-sensory oratorio written to commemorate the 146 workers who perished in a factory fire in what was the deadliest industrial disaster in New... Read more... |
Le nozze di Figaro, Komische Oper Berlin, Edinburgh International Festival 2024 review - great singing wastedTuesday, 20 August 2024
I’m all in favour of the EIF taking artistic risks, and of them bringing a high-prestige international production to Edinburgh. This Marriage of Figaro from Berlin’s Komische Oper is both of those things, because it is the first production by Kirill... Read more... |
Altstaedt, EUYO, Noseda, Edinburgh International Festival 2024 review - inclusive and brilliantMonday, 19 August 2024
People hold lots of different opinions about the European Union, but there’s really only one acceptable opinion to be held about the European Union Youth Orchestra; namely, that they’re brilliant. Their visit to the Edinburgh International Festival... Read more... |
- 1 of 8
- ››
