Edinburgh Festival
Miranda Heggie
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 York’s history. Scored for orchestra and female chorus, each voice part represents an individual worker who died, most of them Jewish or Italian immigrants.The piece begins with a depiction of passengers on a board a ship, and in this performance the female voices of the National Youth Choir of Scotland were on their standard excellent form, swaying Read more ...
Simon Thompson
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 Serebrennikov – the high profile Russian director, placed under house arrest by the Putin regime, now based in Berlin – to be seen in the UK.But the EIF agreed to host it before its Berlin premiere, and while they must have had their suspicions about how “radical” it was, I doubt they were prepared for just what a mess it turned out to be. For one Read more ...
Simon Thompson
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 consisted of two hour-long concerts, but the hundred musicians, aged 18-26, hailing from 27 countries, crammed more artistry and brilliance into those two concerts than some orchestras manage in a season.Sure, the tone wasn’t always there, and occasionally you could notice a lack of maturity. The violins sounded rather too bright for Elgar’s " Read more ...
Simon Thompson
When you stop to think about it, Schwanengesang is a pretty ridiculous thing. Schubert’s final song cycle was famously put together by his publishers after his death, and so it’s barely a cycle at all. Therefore, unlike Die schöne Müllerin and Winterreise, there’s no story and, even worse, the lurches in mood between the songs are so extreme that they can become absurd.I reflected on that several times while watching Ian Bostridge singing it during this EIF Queen’s Hall recital, because his identification with the songs and their meaning seemed so complete that he could drag the audience into Read more ...
Miranda Heggie
Immersive opera such as this can be tricky to pull off, but the magic of Roxana Haines’s new production of Stravinsky’s Oedipus Rex lies in its simplicity, letting the material organically weave around the audience without overcomplications or deliberately clever trickery.The National Museum of Scotland proved itself to be a fine venue for this performance in many ways. Its vast expanse of space allowed for much milling around the orchestra, which was in the centre, and the first floor balcony provided an elevated platform for those who’d prefer a birds’ eye view and not to be right in Read more ...
Simon Thompson
When you’re running a three-concert residency, you can afford to take a few repertoire risks, to programme a few things that might be close to your heart but which won’t pack in the punters.That must be the reason why the Bamberg Symphony Orchestra’s EIF residency included Hans Rott’s First Symphony in its first night and in this, its last, Dvořák’s Te Deum and Josef Suk’s Asrael symphony, works close to Chief Conductor Jakub Hrůša’s heart but which don’t resonate so much with British audiences.Predictably, therefore, the Usher Hall was only half full for both of those concerts (their middle Read more ...
Simon Thompson
The Queen’s Hall isn’t going to know what has hit it after the opening weekend of this year’s Edinburgh International Festival. What’s usually the festival’s demure home of chamber music – string quartets, piano trios and so on – was still recovering from Jakub Józef Orliński’s theatrics from Saturday morning, when it encountered this scorching performance of choral music from the Schola Cantorum de Venezuela (★★★★★).The Schola Cantorum’s main reason for being in Edinburgh last weekend was to take part in Golijov's La Pasión según San Marcos in the Usher Hall on Saturday evening, but Read more ...
Simon Thompson
When I first started attending the Edinburgh International Festival in the 1990s, the Opening Concert (capitals intentional) was a grand Usher Hall affair on a Sunday evening; a central work of the western classical tradition to set the festival running. Not any more. They’ve steadily moved the opening of the festival forwards over the years (the first of 2024’s preview events took place last Thursday) and this year the opening concerts take place over not one but two nights.The theme that director Nicola Benedetti has chosen for this year’s festival is Rituals that unite us, and the opening Read more ...
Miranda Heggie
Trouble. Overly honest. Too opinionated. Ultimately get killed for refusing to let go of their principles and kowtowing to the status quo. I didn’t ever expect myself to be writing about the similarities between Carmen and Jesus Christ, but then I suppose that presenting the unexpected and inspiring audiences to think about art in new ways is what the Edinburgh International Festival’s meant to do. “Rituals that Unite Us” is this year’s theme, in Festival Director Nicola Benedetti’s second year in the role. Like all good themes it has both depth and breadth. Of course, the art of coming Read more ...
Simon Thompson
The Edinburgh International Festival’s Queen’s Hall series ended with two very impressive debuts. Thursday morning brought the Isidore Quartet, who winningly, if slightly naively, told us that Edinburgh had a similar energy to their native New York.These four young men – the oldest member is 24 – were charm personified in the second of Haydn’s “Sun” Quartets, combining easy grace with carefree beauty, and using vibrato only discreetly to colour the sound carefully. Similarly, their take on the third of Mendelssohn’s Op 44 Quartets combined delicacy with warmth and terrific clarity of Read more ...
Christopher Lambton
This was one of the more strait-laced concert performances, with few concessions to Wagner’s underlying stage drama. The soloists were in formal concert dress, strung out in a line at the front of the stage, with interaction between them limited to looks of anguish and the sparest of gestures. The shepherd boy in Act 1 was banished to the upper reaches of the organ gallery, and there was a substantial off-stage band in Act 2, but otherwise there was nothing to distract us from the music.But what music! Wagner's Overture to Tannhäuser is justly seen as a masterpiece in its own right, but under Read more ...
Simon Thompson
Several years ago I got chatting to a young tenor who was training at the Royal Northern College of Music. He was enjoying his studies, but complained that, as a British tenor, he got offered a lot of Britten and Handel but not an awful lot else.There was Britten aplenty in this recital from Nick Pritchard, another young British tenor, but it was a shrewd move for him to begin his recital with French language repertoire because it showed up a side of his voice that I found as surprising as it was lovely.Put simply, there’s a gorgeous sweetness to Pritchard’s voice that knocked me for six. The Read more ...