EIF 2022 - There's Runnicles with Fidelio, or, A Powerfully Felt Performance

 Regular readers will know we are admirers of Donald Runnicles at this blog, well our name is a bit of a giveaway. His performances of concert opera at the International Festival over the years have consistently been highlights, and it's been really excellent news that after the baffling gap of the Mills era, Linehan has in recent Festivals resumed inviting Runnicles to give concert opera. I sincerely hope Nicola Benedetti will continue to do so when she takes over as Artistic Director next year.

My history of staged Fidelios has been pretty dismal, in fact I think I've probably seen more failed productions of this opera than of any other. The last time the Festival included the work was a candidate for the worst opera staging I've ever seen, and since then the Royal Opera and Glyndebourne have added problematic productions. It occurred to me after this performance that directors perhaps start from the premise that the work is a problem and feel they have to do drastic things to it - not least because of the chunks of spoken dialogue. Somewhat to my surprise Runnicles had decided to include some narrative summary between the musical numbers here - adapted by Sir David Pountney and delivered by Sir Willard White (also singing Don Fernando). The odd thing for me was that as the performance went on I think I was tending to tune the summary out and feeling the musical performance as a compelling drama in its own right. Maybe it's because I now know the work well and my mind could fill in the gaps, but I also think it's to do with how much is there in the libretto and Beethoven's music, assisted here by the deeply felt performances of all the musicians on stage. In other words it really struck me that actually this work doesn't have to be nearly such a problem piece as directors have so often seemed determined to treat it - everything you need is there for powerful emotional drama - done more straightforwardly on stage as it essentially was here it could be gripping, moving - as this was for me.

EIF 2019 - Angela Hewitt at the Usher Hall, or, A Masterclass in Pianism

The last time I heard Angela Hewitt at the Edinburgh Festival (I'm pretty sure) was way back in the mists of time in 2002. On that occasion she was a substitute for Andras Schiff and performed the Goldberg Variations to a sold out Usher Hall as part of the wonderful Royal Bank Lates. I remember that concert for several reasons. I hadn't planned to go when it was originally advertised because I'd heard Schiff in several Queen's Hall recitals and hadn't cared for his style. Nor was I, then, very keen on Bach. But when the substitution was announced I thought I'd like to hear Hewitt live. I credit that concert with making me realise that Bach can be a rather amazing composer. So when the programme was announced for this year's Festival, these two marathon concerts of the complete Well Tempered Clavier were top of my list of things to catch. It proved to be a memorable experience.

Hewitt's programme note, matched to her approach to grouping in performance, proved very helpful to this listener effectively encountering the work for the first time - I recognised the occasional individual prelude and fugue, and the phrase that Kit and the Widow satirise as Lloyd Webber borrowing. Hewitt suggests that it is helpful to approach the preludes and fugues as groups of four. This gave shape to the evenings and assisted me to retain a sense of place within the journey.

EIF 2018 - Dvorak's Requiem at the Usher Hall, or A Festival Special

When the programme was announced back in March this rarity was one of the more interesting items in an Usher Hall line up which as in recent years continues to play it fairly safe. It proved to be one of the highlights of the Festival so far.

I'd previously heard Dvorak's St Ludmila at the Festival back in 2002 and that had proved to be an unfairly neglected work, though I think it has only reappeared in the UK once since. I don't think the Requiem is quite such a strong piece, it is, apart from anything else, a little in Verdi's shadow. But there are lots of strong elements to it, and Jakub Hrusa led his forces expertly to make the best possible case for it.

EIF 2018 - Hansel und Gretel at the Usher Hall, or, A Slice of Faerie

After nearly thirty years of regular opera-going it's getting rarer for me to encounter a work I haven't previously seen or heard. But this was one such occasion. In advance, I wasn't expecting a great deal - one of the reasons I hadn't previously heard this work was that family opinion towards it was not favourable. But it seems to me if done in the right spirit, as this performance unquestionably was, it's a piece which is a lot of fun.

The opera is a concise rendering in three short acts of the familiar fairy tale, ending up with the witch vanquished by being shoved into her own oven - in principle a fairly gruesome moment but not one on which the work dwells. There are clear Wagnerian overtones to the score, and I also thought anticipations of some of the natural world elements of Strauss's Die Frau ohne Schatten. But I rather like those sound worlds, so this didn't bother me. The score has a nice range from fun (particularly in the witch's music), to beauty (Sandman/Dew Fairy) and drama (the Witch's Ride) - all of which were brought vividly to life by the RSNO in fine form, under the expert dramatic command of Andrew Davis.

EIF 2018 - Samson at the Usher Hall, or, An Evening of HIP Handel

I'm generally a fan of Handel's operas and oratorios, and I was also looking forward to hearing the Dunedin Consort for the first time, especially after the recent furore over the cuts to their funding (later I think reversed). This was a very strong evening, though I still retain some personal doubts about aspects of historically informed performance.

This typically epic oratorio follows the Biblical story of Samson. Strikingly, though, much of that saga has taken place by the time the work opens. Samson has thus already been betrayed by Dalila, had his hair shorn, and is languishing in prison. The bulk of the three acts here are therefore concerned with everybody's lamentations about this and worrying about what is going to happen next, until Samson finally pulls down the Philistine temple (off-stage) in Act III. There are thus some issues with dramatic tension. It was interesting to compare this with Saul, which I saw at Glyndebourne last week. But in addition the emotional dilemmas of the characters are less compelling than in, say, a Handel opera like Ariodante. In this performance, a decision was also taken to retain the many lengthy recitatives. I wasn't wholly convinced by this - there are some nice moments, but the text adapted from Milton amongst others is not the best Handel ever set, the music is not particularly interesting, and these sections further slow up the dramatic momentum.

EIF 2017 - Peter Grimes at the Usher Hall, or, Worthy Of A Standing Ovation

When the festival programme was announced I expressed some scepticism about the merits of another performance of this opera, given frequently in the Britten centenary year, though this was mitigated by the many years since the work had been seen in Scotland and the exceptional cast. I also personally wondered whether it could live up to the extraordinary experience of Grimes on the Beach at Aldeburgh. I was wrong to have doubted on either count. This semi-staged performance found an equivalent emotional punch. It took me in its grip almost from the first notes and held me with an intensity not often experienced in this kind of performance.

Vera Rostin Wexelsen's semi-staging is subtle, but very effective. The cast are in modern dress. The nieces as a result recalled to my mind (I thought maybe I'd seen a comment on this in a review of the Bergen performance but I now can't find it) the prostitutes of the musical London Road (set nearby in Ipswich). The variety of dress amongst the chorus of townsfolk leant extra power to their denunciations – it was all too easy to see them as a baying mob even though in practice they stayed in place in ranks in the Organ Gallery. A few key props are added – the fatal embroidered jumper, ropes, souwester for the apprentice. Mostly, though, the staging depends for its impact on the individual characterisations and interactions. In both cases these had a consistent emotional intensity. A few moments especially stand out in memory – Stuart Skelton (Grimes) a hand persistently going troubled to his temple, Erin Wall's (Ellen Orford) disturbing struggle with the apprentice as she tries to discover what he's hiding, various moments when Christopher Purves's (Balstrode) either does, or does not lay a hand in attempted comfort on Ellen's shoulder. Also worth noting was Grimes's final exit through the auditorium – a subtle hint I felt at our own potential complicity with the village in what has passed.

EIF 2016 – Daniil Trifonov at the Usher Hall, or, An Evening of Magnificent Pianism

I first became a fan of Liszt's piano music in 2011 when I made a rather insane trip in the middle of my annual Edinburgh visit to hear Louis Lortie play the complete Annees de Pelerinage at the Snape Maltings. It was an unforgettable performance. In recent times though, thanks to regular visits from the talented Daniil Trifonov, Edinburgh has also been lucky enough to hear some superb Liszt. A particular highlight was Trifonov's Queen's Hall recital in 2014 when he gave an outstanding account of the complete Transcendental Etudes. This year he was upgraded to the Usher Hall for a recital of Bach's Chaconne (arranged for piano left hand by Brahms), Liszt's Grandes etudes de Paganini and Rachmaninov's Piano Sonata No.1. It proved to be one of the highlights so far of Festival 2016.

The Bach/Brahms opener is in part a striking technical challenge. Closing my eyes it was hard to imagine that the intricate sequences and often rich timbres were being produced with only one hand. Occasionally, individual progressions could feel a little over-laboured, I presume an effect of that technical limitation, but overall the effect became remarkably gripping. Brahms's transcription successfully brings out the range of Bach's dynamic, tonal, speed and chorale like effects and Trifonov captured them all. A fascinating occasional piece.

EIF 2016 – Barry Humphries' Weimar Cabaret, or, Histories from a Vanished World

I always enjoy spending time in this particular musical world. What made this show unique was the presence of Barry Humphries as compere and sometime performer. This gives the evening a particularly personal touch as Humphries describes its origins in his discovery of a case of Weimar era music in a secondhand bookstore in Melbourne, brought there by one of the era's exiles. Alongside Humphries's masterfully delivered, and often moving, anecdotes we have cabaret songs performed by Meow Meow, and orchestral pieces performed by the Australian Chamber Orchestra directed from the violin by Richard Tognetti.

The musical selection includes plenty of Weill (unsurprisingly), but also Hindemith's Kammermusik Op.24 No.1 (why his work doesn't get more performances I don't know) and a wonderful selection from Krenek's Potpourri. The Australian Chamber Orchestra were, to my ears, heard to better advantage here than in their Queen's Hall concert on Saturday, and Tognetti was excellent in the solo part of Brand's Black Bottom. I also very much enjoyed the rare chance to hear Toch's Geographical Fugue.

EIF 2015 – HMS Pinafore, or, Showing London How It's Done (Again)

This concert performance of HMS Pinafore continues two trends of the 2015 Festival. First, like the semi-staged Budapest Figaro it contained more drama than many fully staged operas seen in London this season (the contrast with ENO's dull fully staged Pirates was especially telling). Second, it maintained the music/opera strand of this year's Festival as its strongest element. Altogether it was an enormously fun afternoon at the Usher Hall.

It was sensibly decided, as I gather was also done when Sir Charles Mackerras conducted the work at the Proms ten years ago, to substitute a single narrator for the spoken dialogue. Tim Brooke-Taylor performed this role with excellent wit harnessing the best of Gilbert's dialogue to some choice anecdotes (the neat reference to W.H. Smith's other profession was an especially deft touch).

EIF 2015 – The Opening Concerts, or, Includes A Blazing Performance from the Home Team

One of the great strengths of the International Festival since 2001 (and a musical combination particularly close to the heart of this blog) has been regular performances from Donald Runnicles and the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra. This year they opened the Usher Hall series, and the second half especially provided a showcase for Runnicles's impact on an already accomplished orchestra.

Before that, the first half gave us three Brahms choral works in partnership with the Edinburgh Festival Chorus: the Gesang der Parzen, the orchestral version of the Liebeslieder Walzer and the Schicksalslied. Collectively these made for a solid, but not wildly exciting appetiser. The Walzer are generally good fun, if rather slight pieces (the chorus had particular fun with no.11's take on spiteful people judging others). The ensemble were at their best in the Schicksalslied where they found a wonderful, quiet air of mystery.

EIF 2014 – Ute Lemper at the Usher Hall, or, In the Presence of Greatness

There are some live performance occasions when critical comment almost becomes superfluous and you simply have to acknowledge that you were privileged to be present while greatness was at work – such was the case with Ute Lemper in last night's festival concert.

In advance of this performance I had high hopes. I'm a big fan of Weimer era cabaret, and indeed cabaret as an art form more broadly. One of the best things about Mills's period as Festival Director has been a willingness to bring more cabaret and musical theatre material under the International Festival umbrella with highlights including his very first opening concert of Bernstein's Candide, and Camille O'Sullivan's cabaret inflected performance of Shakespeare's Rape of Lucrece. However, there were dangers about this particular collaboration. Classical orchestras trying to do cabaret inflected work can come a cropper (as with the concert performance of Weill's Mahagony some years back at the Festival). The Scottish Chamber Orchestra and conductor Lawrence Foster's work was not without blemish, but so outstanding was Ute Lemper that I forgave other infelicities.

EIF 2014 – The Opening Concert, or, A Justly Resurrected Rarity

In advance of this year's opening concert I had my doubts. Jonathan Mills has several times resurrected neglected works which prove to be deservedly neglected (Delius's Mass of Life springs to mind). I recalled listening to a recording of the Debussy which made little impression on me. And Oliver Knussen at Aldeburgh tends towards the over full programme. As it turned out, Debussy's Le Martyre de Saint Sebastien proved well worth hearing.

The concert actually began with Schoenberg's Five Orchestral Pieces and Scriabin's Prometheus, the Poem of Fire. I don't think I've heard either of these live before. About the first I was sufficiently distracted by disruptive audience behind me that I don't feel I can properly comment. The second is a typical piece of large forces  madness – huge orchestra, wordless choir and organ towards the end – which builds to an enjoyably loud climax but has a somewhat meandering feel up to that point. It isn't as satisfying a piece as The Poem of Ecstasy, but it was finely played and sung by the Royal Scottish National Orchestra, the Festival Chorus and pianist Kirill Gerstein who I hope to hear again in solo repertoire. It's also always a treat to hear the restored Usher Hall organ in action, however briefly.

The 2014/15 SCO Season

Today, the Scottish Chamber Orchestra launch their 2014/15 season. It opens with a work one would not immediately expect from a chamber orchestra: Mahler's 4th symphony. One might logically assume that it is one of the chamber arrangements (such as Erwin Stein's), but nothing in press information or the brochure suggests this. It must therefore be assumed that they will perform the full version, which would not be out of kilter with Ticciati's fondness for works more usually programmed with larger forces. After all, a couple of years ago they started with the Symphonie Fantastique. More interesting, to me, is the pairing: a new concerto for harp by Hosokawa.

Mahler is something of a theme, with Das Lied von der Erde cropping up later on (which this time is an arrangement, Cortese's though, not Schoenberg, as was the case when he programmed it a couple of years ago). Both concerts also feature Karen Cargill. I'm once again reminded of an April fool I considered a few years back involving an SCO season with a Mahler cycle, but I've written about that before (sadly season announcements in late March are not conducive to such a joke).

Fortunately, alongside one of Ticciati's less appealing, to me, programming tendencies as chief conductor, is one of his most: a series of Haydn's symphonies are scattered through the year, including 70, 101 , 103 and 104. Better yet, as I have long been requesting, he will take the orchestra into the studio with Linn to record six of them. I also look forward to hearing Ticciati's take on Schubert's great C major symphony towards the end of the season.

The 2014/15 RSNO Season

Today the RSNO launched its 2014/15 season, Peter Oundjian's 3rd as music director. Much of the programme leaves me fairly cold, mainly because thus far Oundjian has not impressed me. But there are a fair few things that do catch my eye.

To start with the positives, the orchestra also continues its collaboration with Thomas Søndergård who most certainly has impressed me (most recently with a dazzling account of Messiaen's Turangalîla symphony). I look forward to hearing him take on Strauss's Metamorphosen and Tchaikovsky's Pathetique (though he will have his work cut out equalling the account Edinburgh audiences were treated to by Mariss Jansons and the Bavarians last festival).

Søndergård is also at the centre of a strand that marks the 150th anniversary of both Sibelius and Nielsen. I am a great fan of both composers and wish we heard more of both of them here. That said, I'm a little wary of anniversary programming, and at least two of the works programmed (Nielsen's Inextinguishable and Sibelius's 6th) have been performed by the orchestra in recent memory. That said, drawing the 6th together with Lindberg's Clarinet Concerto does make for interesting programming, and I'm very glad of the opportunity to hear Nielsen's violin concerto.

The 2014 Edinburgh International Festival Programme

Today Jonathan Mills' launched his 8th and final Edinburgh International Festival. On paper, at least, the programme appears to be one of his stronger ones, presenting some difficult choices for the compulsive festival goer. You can't do everything, the old adage goes, and there have been years when one hasn't wanted to, but it is a very pleasant problem to have.



Oliver Knussen and the RSNO are on duty for the opening concert. The feature work is Debussy's Le Martyre de Saint Sebastien. I'm not familiar with it, and Debussy doesn't as a rule set my pulse racing so hopefully it won't prove one of Mills' damp squib openers, for which he has something of a tendency. (Initial research today on Spotify is not frightfully positive - and I guess I'll have to wait at least another year for the stunning opener Sibelius's Kullervo would make.) Still, Knussen normally brings plenty of energy. And the first half includes Scriabin's Prometheus - The Poem of Fire which should have no shortage of thrills.

EIF 2013 - Ensemble musikFabrik, or, Why did nobody tell me about Zappa before?

One of the real strengths of Jonathan Mills's tenure as Artistic Director has been the increased presence of contemporary music in the classical programme. It has also been encouraging this year, having attended most performances which could be placed in that category, to see what seems to be larger audiences at these events. I can remember occasions when merely playing one new piece in an otherwise safe Edinburgh programme was enough for attendance to plummet. This strand of the programme reached its Usher Hall climax last night (there is still Olga Neuwirth's new opera to come at the King's) with Ensemble musikFabrik's outstanding tribute to Frank Zappa.

Zappa was in fact only part of a very cleverly devised programme also including John Cage and Edgard Varese. The programme note begins from the premise that Varese is the link and that otherwise Cage and Zappa actually don't have much in common, but my impression from the performance was that this was actually not the case. There seemed in particular to be distinct parallels in use of percussion and rhythmic complexity between Cage's Credo in US and a number of the Zappa pieces.

EIF 2013 - Uchida, Jansons and the Bavarians PLAY Beethoven and Tchaikovsky (though their Mahler is not as convincing)

For my money, Mariss Jansons and the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra are one of the finest conductor/orchestra partnerships available, and since both Beethoven's 4th piano concerto and Tchaikovsky's 6th symphony are favourites of mine, their first concert always had the potential to be one of the festival's highlights. Given these high expectations, it is doubly impressive that not only did they not disappoint but if anything they exceeded them.

For the Beethoven they were joined by Mitsuko Uchida. Together they delivered a spellbinding 3rd concerto in London a few years ago. The 4th, from its soft solo opening onwards, is perhaps even better suited to her delicate style (indeed, the movement of her fingertips reminded me slightly of Gergiev's conducting during the opening concert). Though nearly not, as just as her fingers were about to descend for the first time, there was a loud clang somewhere in the auditorium. Fortunately after recomposing herself she got started and proceeded to spend the next thirty minutes dazzling us, not only from the keyboard, but also with the wonderful look she gave to silence the audience before the second movement, and when discarding her flowing yellow silken top.

Beneath her Jansons provided supremely judged accompaniment so that no matter how softly she played the orchestra was never in danger of swamping her. Kazushi Ono (the conductor of Opera de Lyon's lamentable Fidelio) could have learnt a lot. Indeed, in the wake of that production, the Bavarians provided a much needed tonic by way of a masterclass in just how well Beethoven can be played. They found more drama in the intensely wrought opening chords of the slow movement than Ono managed in an entire opera.

Uchida was rapturously received and followed Beethoven with some sparkling Scarlatti. She returns to the Usher Hall this evening for a solo recital of Bach, Schoenberg and Schumann which I for one will not be missing.

EIF 2013 - Gergiev and the RSNO set the stage with Alexander Nevsky

In the hands of Valery Gergiev, the festival's honorary president, Prokofiev's Alexander Nevsky made for one of the best opening concerts we've had for a while. It was an all Prokofiev programme and this is sure ground for Gergiev, who has made a good survey of the symphonies with the London Symphony Orchestra (and, indeed, played them at the festival a few years back). Last night they began with his third piano concerto. The solo part was taken by the very young Daniil Trifonov who played superbly, bringing both great virtuosity but also no shortage of subtlety when needed. This was even truer of his encore, from Nikolai Medtner's Fairy Tales op.51, no.2, which was beautifully poetic.

In the last two years, we have been treated to works that would charitably be described as damp squibs (Schumann's Das Paradies und die Peri in 2011 and Delius's A Mass of Life last year). Neither has anything close to the sort of energy raising potential needed to set the mood for three weeks of festivities. Fortunately the cantata made up of around forty minutes of music from Eisenstein's film most certainly does.

EIF 2013 - The Music Programme in more detail

In a sensible change, the launch of this year's Edinburgh International Festival programme was slightly less frantic than is traditionally the case. In past years, booking has opened on the day of the launch, but this year we had fully 24 hours to digest the programme first. This was just as well as it featured some tough choices, though for me at least somewhat front loaded with the most clashes at the start. I've already offered my first impressions, but since public booking opens today, here, a little later than planned, are my fuller thoughts on the music programme. (My brother looks at theatre and opera here.)

The task of kicking off the festival is in the hands of honorary president Valery Gergiev, though not as one might expect with either of his regular partners, the London Symphony Orchestra or the Mariinsky. Instead he takes up the baton (or more likely the toothpick, as is his preference) with the RSNO for Prokofiev's 3rd piano concerto and Alexander Nevsky. It's unusual that we're not getting a single work but on the positive side, this should prove a far more exciting and appropriate curtain raiser than the damp squibs of the last two years.

This year sees a reasonable crop of visiting orchestras, chief among them the exceptional Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra under Mariss Jansons. They were last here way back in 2007, Mills' first season. They impressed me so greatly that I travelled to London for a series of appearances they made at the Festival Hall over the following years (with programmes including Bruckner, Shostakovich, Strauss and Mahler). Sadly they have not been back lately, making their visit all the more welcome. For my money, this is one of the very best conductor / orchestra teams in the world and is absolutely not to be missed. Jansons is no slouch in Mahler 2 either, one of the works they're bringing, as he proved with the Concertgebouw at the Barbican a few years ago, rivalling the man himself for offstage brass placement. Be warned, he will almost certainly observe the five minute break Mahler marks in the score between the first and second movements (not a decision I agree with, and one which last time prompted me to fear seriously for his health).I'm even keener to hear what they can do with Tchaikovsky 6.

Peter Oundjian and the RSNO present Má vlast

While I've long been familiar with Smetana's Má vlast, it is only comparatively recently that I came to love it. That was as a result of a glitteringly persuasive account from Jiří Bělohlávek and the BBC SO at the Proms two years ago, so fine it swept me away completely even without being in the hall. Alas it has not been issued on disc.

A slight problem with having an experience like that is that nothing that follows quite seems to recapture it. This was the first time I've heard the piece in the flesh and so the fact that while I found the performance good, it didn't sweep me away, may owe something to that context.

Generally the playing was of a good calibre. The strings shone particularly, especially in some of the fierce chords found in Tábor. Oundjian's interpretation was rather what I have come to expect from him: solid, and often at his best in the realisation of some of the big climaxes. And yet, at the same time missing that extra x factor. In the smaller moments particularly he didn't let the score bloom and open up as it can. Interestingly, since it was the movement he chose to describe in his talk, for me Šárka fell flattest of all. He had said all the right things, but somehow he didn't bring them out.