Edinburgh
Simon Thompson
You may well have seen a concerto performance that has been “directed from the keyboard”, or maybe even one that’s “led from the violin”, but have you ever seen a concerto that’s directed from the oboe?It’s quite a sight, I can tell you, and it needs a level of skill and insight that I can’t imagine many oboists possess. François Leleux has it in spades, though, and has fine-tuned it during his regular appearances with the Scottish Chamber Orchestra over the last few years, which have begun to take on the air of a festive occasion. I’ve seen him conduct lots of pieces while playing, but to Read more ...
Simon Thompson
“You’ll have to forgive me”, said Sir Andrew Davis at the start of this concert’s second half, “but I’m going to sit down.” As he lowered himself onto his podium stool, he let it slip that this was the first concert he had conducted in more than two years.All the more excellent to have him back, then. Davis has had some first-class concerts with the Royal Scottish National Orchestra over the last decade or so, but none more memorable than their Walküre and Götterdämmerung as part of the Edinburgh International Festival’s 2016-2019 Ring cycle. He strikes sparks off the orchestra and they play Read more ...
Christopher Lambton
Two pianists; two concertos; two orchestras. It is not often that Edinburgh’s most venerable concert hall plays host, on consecutive nights, to two of our national orchestras offering strikingly similar programmes.While the Scottish Chamber Orchestra under Maxim Emelyanychev had the young British pianist Benjamin Grosvenor playing Liszt’s Piano Concerto No. 1, the following night saw the Royal Scottish National Orchestra tackle Beethoven’s Piano Concerto No. 4 with the not-quite-so-young Steven Osborne as soloist. Both orchestras also included a Beethoven symphony in their programmes.On paper Read more ...
Simon Thompson
This time last year, the moment I knew things were really bad was when the Dunedin Consort cancelled Messiah. All performances since the summer of 2020 had been online films, but Dunedin cancelled even their online Messiah because it would involve performers travelling from all corners of the UK to do it. Sure enough, a couple of days later, what we then called the “Kent variant” appeared, and the grim winter lockdown began.Fast forward to December 2021 and another Covid shadow is hanging over us, though now we’re enlightened enough to name it after a Greek letter. Jo Buckley, the Dunedin Read more ...
Lisa-Marie Ferla
“How to explain Theresa May?” Grace Petrie muses from the Summerhall stage as she introduces decade-old opener “Farewell To Welfare”. “Well, in 2010, she was as bad as we thought it was going to get.”That is, on the face of it, the problem with being a protest singer: in a just world, your songs should ultimately lose their potency. But the crowd at this twice-rescheduled Edinburgh show have been waiting a long time to hear Petrie’s powerful messages of solidarity across class, race, gender and ability lines and while the names may change, the sentiments are as relevant as ever.Lockdowns Read more ...
Simon Thompson
Peter Whelan is best known to Scottish audiences from his years of service as principal bassoon in the Scottish Chamber Orchestra. He left to pursue other projects several years ago, the most illustrious of which has probably been his work with the Irish Baroque Orchestra and his own Ensemble Marsyas, both of which demonstrate his interest in and flair for the music of the Baroque and Classical periods.He returned to the SCO on Thursday night, but on the podium rather than in the band, and his expertise in period performance lit up a really exciting performance of Haydn’s Symphony No. 102. It Read more ...
Christopher Lambton
“What a lovely sound that was!” declared Music Director Thomas Søndergård, bounding onto the podium of the Usher Hall. He was referring, of course, to the warm applause greeting the Royal Scottish National Orchestra on its first full outing in front of an Edinburgh audience in nigh on 18 months. Readers in England might be faintly surprised that many weeks after a largely unmasked Prom season in London, Scottish audiences are only now creeping back into their familiar spaces, and in the case of the Usher, masks are still compulsory, with conspicuous social distancing reducing the capacity of Read more ...
Simon Thompson
This concert almost had me in tears before a single note was played because it marked (joy!) the first classical concert to take place in the Usher Hall since it was shut in March 2020. She has been closed for eighteen long months, but she hasn’t aged a day.The final piece of music I heard in the Usher Hall before lockdown was Beethoven's Emperor Concerto, so there’s a pleasing symmetry to the fact that it’s also the first I heard when it reopened. And it’s played here by a crack musical team, one that is still glowing from its magnificent Mozart at this summer’s Proms. That concert, Read more ...
Douglas McDonald
This lively interpretation of Richard Strauss’s opera within an opera provides a feast for the senses as a musical highlight of the Edinburgh international Festival. As with the rest of the festival’s 2021 programme, the opera is performed outdoors, in a hangar designed to protect the audience from the Scottish elements and to allow for social distancing.While the venue has proven challenging for some concert performances, it feels appropriate for the setting of Ariadne auf Naxos.The two-hour show is an excellent choice for a slightly chilly evening, as Strauss delights in revealing the Read more ...
David Kettle
The popcorn on offer as you enter the Pleasance’s performing space at the Edinburgh International Conference Centre quickly fills the air with its rich, sugary scent. It’s a smell that sets the scene nicely for a show set in a cinema, but also an aroma that takes on increasingly heavy, cloying, sickly – and inescapable – connotations as Screen 9 progresses.Twelve people were killed and 70 injured in July 2012 at a mass shooting in Aurora, Colorado, at the midnight premiere of the Batman movie The Dark Knight Rises. For its debut production, London-based Piccolo Theatre has devised a verbatim Read more ...
David Kettle
Ageing Mick wakes up on Portobello beach with two gold rings in his pocket, and embarks on the bender to end all benders in order to work out what or who they’re for. Young Gilly has a poorly pug named Mr Immanuel Kant, but can’t face having it put down. Gaynor has suffered from fibromyalgia for decades, but must put it aside if she’s to see her newborn granddaughter. Dougie and Ciara are preparing for their life-changing arrival with one last hedonistic night on the dance floor.On the face of it, Frances Poet seems to be following a well-worn path as the five Edinburgh lives in her quietly Read more ...
Miranda Heggie
The Edinburgh International Festival has returned this year, with a programme of socially distanced events held almost completely outdoors. Yup, that’s right. Outdoors. In Scotland. (Top tip: if you’re going to one of the 8pm concerts, wear a winter coat. It gets somewhat chilly when the sun goes down.) The purpose-built structures which house EIF’s classical music programme are actually pretty robust, and the venue for the larger-scale classical concerts – the grounds of Edinburgh Academy Junior School – is just within walking distance of the city centre, but far enough from busy roads that Read more ...