Chicken Soup with Barley at the Royal Court, or Small Tragedies behind Closed Doors

After sitting through three plus hours of the Old Vic's Shakespearean shout fest, Chicken Soup with Barley at the Royal Court came as something of a blessed relief. This is a very human, rather sad play about family disintegration, with a light leavening of political disillusionment.

Arnold Wesker's play follows the lives of the members of the Communist Kahn family beginning as they prepare to confront a demo by Mosley's Black shirts in late 1930s London, and carrying us through to twenty years later as both family and politics crumble. Everything is very open here, and a certain kind of ordinary. Contrasted with the games played by Albee, and the issues posed by Shakespeare's language, dilemmas here are very simply and openly expressed, but just as powerful. Crises happen suddenly, organically, and have to be lived with. The personal ones of family fortunes are easier to get across than the political since today a loss of faith in Communism is hardly surprising, yet the political does come across. There is something in this play of the great hope that things were going to be different after 1945 and the loss of hope, even on this small personal scale resonates.

As with the Almeida's Delicate Balance the play succeeds on the strength of a uniformly excellent ensemble. Particular mentions go to Tom Rosenthal (Ronnie Kahn) and Joel Gillman (David Simmons) both of whom make their professional debuts in this production, something I would not have guessed but for the programme so informing me. Alexis Zegerman (Cissie Kahn) brings off a striking transformation from loyal young socialist to disillusioned grass widow, and likewise Danny Webb (Harry Kahn) who successfully surmounts the challenges of what in some respects might be considered a rather thankless role. I look forward to seeing more of all of them (and indeed the rest of the supporting cast). Above all, though, I enjoyed watching one of my favourite actresses, Samantha Spiro (Sarah Kahn). Her role is the lynch pin of the drama and she delivered every line in a way that told (Mr Spacey might like to note that doing this without shouting can actually be very powerful).

The Mendes/Spacey Richard III, or Shout Louder God damn It!

This production of Richard III, perhaps not surprisingly given the two star names involved, is completely sold out. It pains me to report (and believe me there was pain involved in sitting through it) that this success is pretty thoroughly undeserved, and you should neither regret it if you didn't manage to secure a ticket, or rush hopefully for the returns queue.

This is the second time I have seen this play. The first time was as part of the RSC History Cycle at the Roundhouse in 2008. That experience was extraordinary, and one of the things I was curious to see was how this play would work when you did not have the experience of living through the history distilled in the previous seven plays. On one level, given the number of famous solo productions of Richard III it seemed odd to think that that could be an issue, on the other hand, so much of that past history seemed to me so central to the play when I saw it in the cycle it was hard to see how it would not be. My conclusion after this afternoon is that yes, it is a problem, and therefore you have to do something about it.

Sam Mendes does do something about it. He pretends that it isn't really there. The text of Richard III is filled with references to murders, betrayals, crimes committed by the surviving protagonists prior to the rise of the curtain. Yet for most of this show these are pretty empty words – the production gives us no sense of who those victims were, why the survivors behaved as they did. Their emotions consequently lack punch because the ghosts are far too ghostly. Mendes perhaps thought that too much bringing out of the back story might confuse his audience – this is certainly implied by his feeling the need to keep projecting the names of key protagonists in particular scenes onto the set – as if we can't possibly work out who any of them are for ourselves. If the problem stopped there it might be okay, but there is a lack of character to virtually all the performances (and this is despite the presence of some usually excellent performers in the company including Haydn Gwynne and Chuk Iwuji). Regular readers will know that one of my biggest bugbears is a failure to engage my emotions and this happened pretty completely in this performance.

A Delicate Balance at the Almeida, or Portraits of Desperation

About two months ago I had to go back to the parental home and clear out my remaining possessions. In the course of this I came upon a programme for a production of Albee's A Delicate Balance which it appeared I had been to see at the King's Theatre in Edinburgh in 1997. Astonishingly (given that this production had apparently featured Eileen Atkins and Maggie Smith) I could recall absolutely nothing about it – indeed I had booked for this production at the Almeida partially because I thought I hadn't seen the play before. In a bid to jog my memory, I read a synopsis of the play, but this didn't help either. After this evening's stunner I can only conclude that for whatever reason I was not ready to appreciate this play at that time.

The play takes place in the home of Agnes (Penelope Wilton) and Tobias (Tim Pigott-Smith), where also lives Agnes's alcoholic sister Claire (Imelda Staunton). One autumnal evening, they are descended upon by their best friends, Harry (Ian McElhinney) and Edna (Diana Hardcastle) who have suddenly been struck by a nameless fear and are seeking sanctuary. No sooner are they installed in daugher Julia's room, than Julia (Lucy Cohu) returns from the wreckage of her fourth marriage.

The first thing one has to get used to with Albee is the style. There is, or at least it feels as if there is, comparatively little in the way of dialogue. Instead scenes are dominated by sililoquys (often for me with overtones of Shakespeare, or for some peculiar reason the National's recent Phedre). This does occasionally present problems as one wonders why on earth everybody on stage is allowing the monologue in question to go on and on. However, the acting is of such class, and the crises of each of the characters so vividly brought out that it pulled me past this issue. That crisis I have tried to capture by the title of this review – each of the ensemble is facing desperation – all of them on some level I think arising from a failure of connection, and a realisation of the falsity of expressions of love and friendship.

Christopher Alden's School Days, or, I refuse to dignify this with an extended analysis

Normally on this blog we take pride in the depth of our analysis, indeed we rather enjoy writing long reviews. This will be brief, probably the briefest thing I have ever written on the blog. If you want more depth on the particular madnesses of the production there are plenty of other critics who have provided it.

Such brevity is easy to stick to because the nature of the evening, from my point of view, is simple. This is a play without text by Christopher Alden about a collection of people who had a miserable time at school, coupled to a soundtrack by Benjamin Britten, and a text by Shakespeare. The problem is that the music and text are inhabiting a completely different world from Alden's play, that is Alden's play basically assumes that virtually nothing in the text means what it says. I cannot off the top of my head think of any other opera production I have seen which so consistently makes the words sung meaningless by the actions with which they are accompanied. About the music there is obviously more room for interpretation, but I felt that certain tendencies in the score were exaggerated in the performance to fit Alden's design and certain other elements hurried over or otherwise obscured (all of which in the first half slows things down to a painful crawl).

In fairness to the company stuck in this madness, they sing and play to a very high standard (indeed musically probably to a more consistently high standard than most of the rest of the season has attained) but the production is so utterly at odds with the music that it left me almost cold and often bored because of the way in which characters were rendered nonsensical.

Denève and the RSNO end their season with Beethoven and Adams

To open the final concert of their 2010/11 season, Denève and the RSNO had chosen John Adams' On the Transmigration of Souls, a piece written for the New York Philharmonic to mark the first anniversary of 9/11. I have the recording of those concerts and have long found it a powerful piece, so it's good to have the opportunity to hear it live.

What struck me most was the various things it reminded me of, from the opening ambient sounds of New York, not entirely unlike the start of Miles Davis's final album Doo-Bop, to the refrain of "missing" which calls to mind Thomas Dolby's One of our Submarines. However, perhaps the most interesting parallel can be drawn with another of the Ten out of 10 works that have featured so prominently this season, and in my view the most successful of them: Magnus Lindberg's Graffiti. Just as that drew on scraps of writing from around Pompeii, so too Adams sets similar fragments from 9/11, perhaps most poignantly in the repeated words of American Airlines flight attendent Madeline Sweeny "I see water and buildings..."

The minimalist settings and blending of electronic elements combine to give a familiar Adams sound world, and Denève controlled his various forces well. The RSNO chorus added a nicely etherial tone.
Perhaps the only stumble came with the offstage trumpet quoting Ives. It may have been a function of where I was seated, but positioned outside the centre door to the dress circle it was just far too prominent. Louder, indeed, that it would have been on the stage, rather defeating what surely is the point of offstage placement.

Rocket to the Moon at the National, or, A Play is more than One Line after Another even if they are good One-Liners

As I was leaving the half-empty Lyttelton auditorium last night an elderly lady in the row in front, with an accent that sounded as though it had got lost en route to the Abbey, declared loudly to her companion something to the effect that there had been some serious miscasting and the girl couldn't do the American accent. This would be an easy explanation for things not altogether working in this show (indeed pretty seriously not working in the first half) but it just isn't sufficient.

The first problem is the play itself which suffers from the Wilde syndrome. Odets clearly liked his one-liners. The trouble is that most of them sound rather forced and their style has a tendency to reduce the utterer to a caricature. In addition this is a very wordy play – there is simply an awful lot of text between the one-liners for perfomers to grapple with. For much of the first half the ensemble shows a tendency to collapse under the weight of the beast – the one-liners don't garner much in the way of laughter, the performers fail to bring to life the human beings delivering these lines. But, as I said at the beginning, I think it is too simple to blame the performers. And this is because, against the run of form of the first half, in the second things begin to happen.

This is centrally a consequence of Joseph Millson's performance as the hen-pecked Ben Stark. His disintegration becomes convincingly real. His despair as Jessica Raine (Cleo Singer) goes out to dinner with another man is palpable. Emotions break beyond the text convincingly. It was this performance that began to give me a clue to what has gone wrong elsewhere. Each of these performers needs to get inside their characters that bit more, get past the text to who these people are under all their words. In the third act, Millson refers to the fact that he is shortly going to be forty. It suddenly struck me that this statement could inform the whole story of the character – this passage of time, this loss of opportunity is what is nagging him – unconsciously in the first scene with his wife, overwhelmingly as the loss of Raine looms ever larger. This doesn't necessarily need to be the central factor, but each of these performers needs to find more definition – and the material to make those definitions clearer is there within the layers of text. My sense of this play is that it is about putting up a flood of words as a mask (in the same way that Cleo Singer compulsively invents herself), while beneath these lurk fearful realities.

London Road at the National, or, I see your violent fisherman and I raise you one serial killer

Some critics have expressed the view that this is subject matter that shouldn't work in musical form – that is the story of a serial killer. The obvious caveat to this is that Sondheim has dealt with a related subject brilliantly in Assassins. The more relevant caveat is that this show really isn't about the killer or his victims (except in one brief interlude in Act Two) but about the community in which they took place. As such apart from the discomforture of seeing certain aspects of human life on stage I didn't find the subject matter especially unsettling.

The defining quality of this show is the source of its material and the way the performers are required to deliver it. This is the first time I have experienced the approach of the Recorded Delivery Theatre Company of which Alecky Blythe is the Artistic Director and my overall feeling is that while there are effective aspects to it there are dangers of repetition which this show did not completely escape. I should note that it is the techniques of the company which are employed here. These are to go out into a community (in this case London Road, Ipswich) and record interviews. Performers are then required to reproduce as exactly as possible the speech patterns of, and exact text spoken by, the interviewees. On the face of it, as composer and lyricist Adam Cork notes in the programme, this might seem difficult to do with the addition of music but Cork actually finds a musical language (which we'll come back to) which successfully reflects Blythe's style.

The world into which we are taken is that of the London Road Neighbourhood Watch association, revitilised following the disruption to their community of the murders, as police and journalists swarm over the street. Normal access and services are disrupted, and one feels for the couple stuck next door to the house of the murderer – I can't have been the only homeowner in the audience contemplating the likely effect on the value of their house of such a circumstance. Nor is one kept from moments of cringing – at the AGM which begins the show, the chairman comments that the remnents of prostitution may have been pushed into a neighbouring street - “but we can't worry about that.” The faintly pushy, sometimes slightly desperate edge to the group events is similarly unsettling. Blythe and Cork, perhaps in a sense the residents themselves, also expose the darker sides of our natures from the comparatively obvious suggestion that an immigrant must be to blame, to the really unsettling cafe scene where two teenagers watch a set of single male patrons (one of whom with book, and overcoat not dissimilar to my own was particularly unnerving to watch) and ponder whether the murderer could be him.

The Tsar's Bride, or the Royal Opera continues its Russian excavations

Rimsky-Korsakov's operas are rarely performed outside Russia, although this is a staple of the repertoire there according to the programme notes. This production, the first at any of the major UK opera companies suggests that this neglect is unfair, but also shows up some of the problems involved.

High praise must first be accorded to the production, directed by Paul Curran with sets and costumes by Kevin Knight. Curran's name rings bells, but I can't on the basis of his programme bio find any evidence that I have seen any of his stagings before. He and Knight successfully transport the action to Putin's Russia creating effectively ominous environments in which violence is never far away, but also suggesting ways in which the old ways linger – whether it be the wedding candles set down around the businessman's roof-top swimming pool, or the fabulous gilt-hall of the death scene, haunted not just by the mad bride but by Tsars and regimes gone by. For me the most effective part of the whole staging is Curran's brilliant handling of the opening aria. I won't spoil it for anyone who may go, but it's a superb example of effective directorial interpretation of the text, and creates a sharp sense of the lurking presence of violence which hangs over the whole opera.

ETO's Fantastic Mr Fox, or The Vexed Question of Opera for Children

Normally when I write a review for this site it is a comparatively straightforward prospect. With operas I judge the performance in question from my perspective as an almost 33 year old opera fanatic who has been attending performances regularly for going on for 20 years. It would be easy enough to write a review along these lines of last night's performance which, from that narrow perspective, did nothing for me. However, I am clearly not the target audience which seems at least to some degree (which we'll come back to in a moment) to be children, most of whom will probably not have been to an opera before. It therefore seems to me that the issue that is really raised by this show is the vexed question of opera for children – what we intend by this idea, and how we can best realise it. This I have tried to address, though I have found it in practice impossible to completely eradicate my normal perspective.

Before coming to the wider question, the intentions of the show need to be identified. The ETO website actually doesn't refer to it as a children's opera but rather as “a new family opera.” They go on to stress though that it is “Perfect for seasoned opera goers and first-timers alike.” The programme note, by librettist Donald Sturrock, argues along similar lines, quoting the General Director of LA Opera, the late Peter Hemmings, who commissioned the work in the 1990s, as saying “There must be something for parents to enjoy too.” There is a slight implication here that you have to be in a family group to enjoy this and the single opera goer should therefore steer well clear.

Here's Runnicles, with Adams, Mahler and Brahms

The audience in the Usher Hall was depressingly thin on Sunday night: even with the upper circle closed, there were huge swaths of empty seats. This despite a programme that was hardly adventurous, featuring as it did romantic mainstays Mahler and Brahms.

Possibly some had been put off by the presence of John Adams, whose work opened the concert. If so that would be a pity as for me it was in some ways the highlight. My Father Knew Charles Ives most strongly evokes the eponymous composer in its opening movement, with its parade and frenetic climax (not to mention some fine trumpet work from Mark O'Keeffe). It is an evocative piece throughout, the second movement full of shimmering textures that perfectly describe the water of a lake. Then, in the final movement, Adams takes us to the mountains. Here were stunning and dangerous vistas, as clear as anything in Strauss or Sibelius.

Brahms 2nd symphony, which closed the evening, is perhaps my least favourite, and yet when played like this I am given to wonder why. From the start Runnicles elicited a fine and rich sound from the BBC SSO and there was a strong sense of yearning that is often synonymous with a fine Brahms performance. Yet there was not a hint of the stodginess that can mire Brahms and this symphony in particular, indeed what marked the reading out was the great lightness of touch and nimbleness which they brought to it. Capped by an exciting finale, it made a fine and emotional finish to the concert and indeed this Edinburgh season.

Uchida, Jansons and the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra PLAY Beethoven and Strauss

When the first international season was announced for the reopened Festival Hall in 2007, one highlight was an appearance by the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra. At the time it was said that this was part of a deal for regular visits spanning four years. They have been consistent highlights of the concert seasons. A shame, then, that this weekend marks the last visit; none is scheduled for next year.

Still, you could hardly have wished for a finer note to end on. In the first half, a slimmed down orchestra was joined by soloist Mitsuko Uchida for a glittering performance of Beethoven's 3rd piano concerto. She was, perhaps, at her most persuasive in the softer moments, displaying both a wonderful poetry and delicacy, especially in the first movement cadenza. And yet that is not to suggest that anything was lacking in the meatier sections. Behind her Jansons and the orchestra provided superbly judged accompaniment, no trace here of those performances where soloist and conductor do not seem to share the same conception of the piece. Indeed, Jansons was often craning round to take his cues from her, something especially apparent when judging the orchestra's reentry following that first cadenza. I often regard the third as not being one of my favourites, yet after a reading such as this I find myself wondering why.

Haydn, Szymanowski and Stravinsky from Ticciati and the SCO

Last week, Robin Ticciati drew to a close the Scottish Chamber Orchestra's series pairing Stravinsky and Haydn. This time, the two composers were joined by Karol Szymanowski for his 2nd violin concerto (the same one, incidentally, that Stéphane Denève and the RSNO treated us to back in November). It is a piece that pushes a chamber orchestra to the limits of its definition and yet Ticciati controlled his forces such that it remained intimate. It's an interesting and compelling piece, and there can't be too many violin concertos that open with a piano. It is cast in a single movement and provides a wonderful platform for the soloist to showcase his technical prowess. In this case, the job fell to Renaud Capuçon who provided an interesting contrast with the RSNO's choice of Frank Peter Zimmerman, having a much warmer and more romantic sound to his interpretation, yet lacking nothing in technical finesse. This was especially apparent during his treatment of the long cadenza at the work's centre. Personally I think I'd chose Zimmerman's style, almost clinical in its clarity and precision but without actually being cold and emotionless, as it seemed to suit the work slightly better, but that's not to argue it was in anyway superior - just different. The fine solo playing was matched by the orchestra whose accompaniment was well judged, particularly in the work's several large and emotive climaxes.

Stravinsky's Orpheus rounded off the evening. The piece is gentle and beautiful, rather that the turbulence one might expect. It also has some great moments for the brass, so it was fortunate that they were on fine form, from the trombones and the quietly muted trumpet near the outset to the emotionally devastating horn theme towards the end. But to single the brass out would be unfair, from ominous descent of Pippa Tunnell's opening harp notes, through the winds and the strings, to her return at the start of the short final scene, you could not complain.

Parsifal at English National Opera, or A Blast from the Past

The Nikolaus Lehnhoff production of Parsifal was one the earliest Wagner operas I saw, and also my first Parsifal (I reckon I have now seen it more frequently than any other Wagner). As far as I can recall it has never been revived at the Coliseum since it's original outing in 1999 (if someone could confirm or dispute this I would be interested to know since the Coliseum's publicity about “last revival” strikes me as a bit misleading if it is also only the first). I had powerful memories of that original experience, and those swayed me to attend despite serious misgivings (on the back of hearing him several times at the Royal Opera in the last couple of seasons) about whether John Tomlinson could possibly manage Gurnemanz in a way which would be bearable to listen to. It turned out on that score I was worrying needlessly, as I shall explain, but equally I did not have the overwhelming evening which seems to have been the lot of many fellow critics.

The production itself had rather more infelicities than I had remembered, and I have a sneaking suspicion that they may have been submerged originally by the overwhelming impact of hearing the music for the first time (in 1999 I was totally blown away by the conclusion of Act One). The most serious such infelicity is the dyno-rod flowermaidens. I have only ever seen one production of this opera where the flowermaidens were voluptuous and enticing and on the strength of the impact of that way of staging the scene (and the fact that every other time it has failed to work for me) I have concluded that it really is the only solution. This problem I had remembered. The main one I had forgotten was the complete disjunction between text and staging in the Good Friday scene, as Gurnemanz and Parsifal sing of natural beauties while sitting in a barren concrete wasteland. On the whole these are outweighed by the many powerful images – the railway line curving away into the distance at the start of Act Three, the barren grey landscapes inhabited by the knights. Most of all, this is not a production which is afraid of the still tableau in which the music is allowed to speak for itself – an attribute that too many of Berry's commissions this season have shown no grasp of at all.

Rattle and the Berlin Philharmonic finish their London residence with Mahler 3

In many ways, Wednesday's final performance of the Berlin Philharmonic's four day stay in London was no different to the rest: the calibre of the orchestra's playing was of a similarly high order and Rattle displayed a fine control of the impressive instrument he has at his disposal, the expressions on his and their faces no less passionate than they have been all week. But, for whatever reason, and I'll try to get to the bottom of it with this post, the performance didn't speak to me emotionally. This brings home particularly starkly how personal and subjective such reactions are, others were clearly deeply moved by it, perhaps for some of the same reasons my heart was not set racing.

That's worth noting as I was clearly in something of a minority, with many in the Festival Hall rising to their feet at the end. Interestingly, for whatever reason, ovations like that seem much common in the Festival Hall; the previous two days of superb Schubert and Mahler at the Barbican did not draw the same response. At Edinburgh's Usher Hall it often feels like the only way you'd get a standing ovation would be to electrify the seats, which I feel is a pity and probably ruled out on health and safety grounds. I don't mention that in any way to belittle the audience's response, rather because I'm simply curious as to the reason for the difference. But I digress.

Rattle and the Berlin Philharmonic play Schubert's great C major and more

The other week when this concert was performed in Berlin, and broadcast via the Digital Concert Hall, it was billed as the 8th symphony, here in London it was the 9th (and you can argue it's number 7 too). Regardless of how you choose to number it, or the disputes are over the numbering, what is surely beyond doubt is that the great C major ranks among the finest symphonies ever written.



It stands on the cusp between the classical and romantic eras, and one measure of its greatness is how wonderfully it responds to both a more classical approach, a la Mackerras or Erich Kleiber, or an unashamedly romantic take, such as Furtwangler provides. Rattle's interpretation, as will be known to those who own the recording he made with the Berliners a few years ago, followed firmly in the footsteps of his predecessor in this regard, and was utterly thrilling for it. This was particularly evident both in his choices of tempo and, as importantly, his changes therein.

Rattle and the Berlin Phil play Stravinsky's Apollon and Mahler 4

In the manner of a striptease in reverse, Simon Rattle and the Berlin Philharmonic have been gradually putting on their clothes, that is to say adding more players to the stage, over the course of the first two of their four London concerts. They began yesterday with but a string quartet, progressing to a chamber orchestra. Concert two opened with a full string orchestra for Stravinsky's Apollon musagète. By coincidence, this is the second time I've come across the work this month, the first being under the baton of Rattle's protégé Robin Ticciati, performing with the Scottish Chamber Orchestra, albeit a different version (I think, I don't have my programme to hand to double check).

It is a stunning piece, so I'm more than glad to be hearing it again. Rattle had arrayed the bass section in a single row at the back of the hall, something that always provides an added visual spectacle and seems to give extra energy. The orchestra's wonderful string sound made for a beautifully textured sonic treat, helped by the way Rattle shaped the music. It was frequently gentle and poetic, yet it also contained plenty of drama, often coming from those driving bass chords.

Disappointing Sibelius from Järvi and the RSNO

There aren't nearly enough Sibelius symphonies on the programmes of Scotland's main orchestras. How nice, then, to see his final two programmed together by the RSNO under the baton of Kristjan Järvi. The last time I heard a Sibelius symphony from the orchestra it was the 4th with his father Neeme at the 2007 Edinburgh festival, and very fine that was too.

In the end, though, it proved rather a shame we were getting Järvi jnr as opposed to snr. The 6th was the more problematic of the two, suffering more than anything from a feeling of being rush. Where was the heartbreaking beauty of those opening bars? More crucially, thoughout there was an absence of the evocative textures and atmospheres so rife in Sibelius's writing. Normally I find Sibelius to be one of the most visually stimulating composers, not so here. Gone too was the satisfyingly broad sweep of a great reading.

Ticciati and the SCO return for another round of Haydn and Stravinsky

After a first instalment which featured about as big a chamber orchestra as you get, Ticciati and the SCO continued their survey Stravinsky's chamber ballets with something scored for more modest forces, but the more satisfying for it. Indeed, after the stage had been reset, only the strings remained to perform Apollon musagète.

One measure of a good piece for string orchestra, and indeed a well performed one, is whether you miss all the instrumental textures that are absent. Not a trace of such concerts haunted this performance, which showed both the most wonderful range and a first class string sound (and some fine solo work from guest leader Matilda Kaul). Ticciati found plenty of drama in the score, especially the haunting power with which they worked their way towards the quiet ending.

Here's Runnicles, with Haydn's "mourning" and Brahms' German Requiem

In the concert hall, Donald Runnicles often seems most at home when taking on big and dramatic choral works, such as Mahler's epic 8th or Verdi's Requiem. So it was on Sunday night as he turned his baton to another great requiem, that of Johannes Brahms.

He took a generally slow approach and didn't always go all out, such as at the start of Denn alles fleisch, holding his fire for the big climaxes, and the more shattering they were for it. At the height of that second movement, also with Qual ruhret sie an and the passage from Revelation that closes the penultimate movement, Runnicles pulled together excellent playing and great choral singing to deliver a devastating emotional impact. It also was nice to have the Usher Hall organ getting a good workout, and made me glad this programme was on there and not just in City Halls, where doubtless they had to make do with a fake one which never feels quite the same, and I really do mean feel. (Edit - see the comments below - no organ was used in Glasgow.) Great climaxes, though, are for naught if the momentum is lost between them. Fortunately Runnicles' mastery of structure was once again on display.

Yet it was the Edinburgh Festival Chorus who were the evening's real stars. About five years ago, they often felt like a pale shadow of their historic selves; last night, however, they were as fine as I've ever heard them, showcasing just how far they've come recently under Christopher Bell. Not only was there a wonderful physical range, from the delicate passages to the loudest climaxes, not only fine control, but they also conveyed a powerful weight and emotion, nowhere more so than as they and the orchestra faded to nothing at the end.

I can sing a rainbow - the SCO present Voice of a City

Taking my seat in the Usher Hall on Saturday afternoon, it was nice to see a rather different demographic than is normal at an SCO concert - a lot younger, for a start, and lots of families too. Similarly, I can't remember the last time I saw such an ocean of colour in the organ gallery.



They were there for Voice of a City, a concert bringing together singers, especially children, from across to the city, to perform with the SCO, the brainchild of their excellent education and outreach department. The first half was given over to The Land of Counterpane, a setting by Howard Blake of poems by Robert Louis Stevenson from A Child's Garden of Verses. It was originally composed for the tricentenary of The Mary Erskine School, and it was well over a hundred young singers from Erskine Stewart's Melville Schools who were there to perform it.