Hit or miss?

I was sorry to miss Ute Lemper’s Edinburgh Festival programme in the Usher Hall last week. Though the auditorium is a bit big for this singer and  the things she sings, Olympia in Paris -
one-time home of Edith Piaf - is not exactly bijou either.

I should have considered the concert a must for another reason also,  because it brought back Lawrence Foster - a conductor bafflingly dismissed by one critic as “drab” - who is an old friend of the Edinburgh Festival though more recently connected with the Monte Carlo Opera. Marseille, Monpellier, Barcelona and other Mediterranean places.

I recall a dapper performance by Foster and the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra of Tippett’s First  Symphony in the Usher Hall in Peter Diamand’s time, and he was once one of the RSNO’s most welcome and adventurous  guest conductors during its winter season.

In Foster’s hands last week, in a concert featuring a rich portion of the Lemper repertoire, the Scottish Chamber Orchestra was surely much more than the mere “backing group” some critics described it as. The fact that the scrupulously compiled items started with Kurt Weill’s Kleine Dreigroschenoper and later included a scintillating dash of Stravinsky surely spoke for  itself, as Lemper’s authentic selection of songs - even if she is now past her prime - must also have done.

Perhaps I am wrong and the evening did not work out to perfection. But Lemper remains an impressive talent, and so does the now septuagenarian Foster. Let us hope he comes back soon.
19 August 201