Blockbusters and Package Deals?
Containing only the most meagre of operatic details, the Edinburgh Festival’s initial schedule for 2015 looks a bit like Hamlet without the prince. At one time the operatic announcement was what mattered - what companies were coming and what they would be presenting on up to eighteen of the festival’s 21 nights - just as was the case in Salzburg, Munich, Holland and other great festivals of the world.
Opera was Edinburgh’s lynchpin. Will it be as important this year with a new director at the helm? It certainly wasn’t during his predecessor’s reign. So we must wait and see. Even if it seems unlikely - and since many new productions turn out to be merely irritating - opera does need to be more prominently featured than it has been in recent years.
Rumours that Ivan Fischer and his exhilarating Budapest Festival Orchestra will be in residence at the Festival Theatre, staging Mozart in their own inimitable and audience-involving manner, have not yet been denied, so let us hope for the best. The fact that these audacious Hungarians will be performing Mozart’s Requiem at the Usher Hall - something they have memorably done before - at least confirms their presence in Edinburgh.
The concert schedule, announced in detail, looks at first glance like the now established mixture of blockbusters (The Rite of Spring, Mahler’s Fifth Symphony, Berlioz’s Requiem) and package deals (the complete Beethoven piano sonatas).
But although it offers nothing very startling, it contains quite a few good things. Berlioz’s Symphonie Fantastique has not been heard in combination with its vocal sequel Lelio since the early 1960s, and John Eliot Gardiner, as conductor of his own romantic and revolutionary orchestra will bring special authority to this arresting double-bill.
The 50th anniversary of the Edinburgh Festival Chorus is being thoroughly celebrated, with a performance of Sibelius’s vast Kullervo Symphony by the RSNO under Edward Gardner and with Beethoven’s Missa Solemnis as the festival’s climax.. Carlo Maria Giulini, who once conducted it here, had held back from this mountain range of a work until he felt “mature” enough to perform it, but young Robin Ticciati, undaunted by its challenges, is surely the right sort of novice to explore its subtleties.
A concert performance of The Pirates of Penzance by Scottish Opera, conducted by that master of Bachian baroquerie Richard Egarr, looks like being the joker in the pack, but the Royal Scottish Conservatoire’s concert performance of Stravinsky’s Rake’s Progress will surely run it a close second.
The opening concert, by the BBC SSO and Donald Runnicles, prefaces Strauss’sEin Heldenleben with rare nuggets of Brahms. nuggets of Brahms with Strauss’s Ein Heldenleben.
6 February 2015
Containing only the most meagre of operatic details, the Edinburgh Festival’s initial schedule for 2015 looks a bit like Hamlet without the prince. At one time the operatic announcement was what mattered - what companies were coming and what they would be presenting on up to eighteen of the festival’s 21 nights - just as was the case in Salzburg, Munich, Holland and other great festivals of the world.
Opera was Edinburgh’s lynchpin. Will it be as important this year with a new director at the helm? It certainly wasn’t during his predecessor’s reign. So we must wait and see. Even if it seems unlikely - and since many new productions turn out to be merely irritating - opera does need to be more prominently featured than it has been in recent years.
Rumours that Ivan Fischer and his exhilarating Budapest Festival Orchestra will be in residence at the Festival Theatre, staging Mozart in their own inimitable and audience-involving manner, have not yet been denied, so let us hope for the best. The fact that these audacious Hungarians will be performing Mozart’s Requiem at the Usher Hall - something they have memorably done before - at least confirms their presence in Edinburgh.
The concert schedule, announced in detail, looks at first glance like the now established mixture of blockbusters (The Rite of Spring, Mahler’s Fifth Symphony, Berlioz’s Requiem) and package deals (the complete Beethoven piano sonatas).
But although it offers nothing very startling, it contains quite a few good things. Berlioz’s Symphonie Fantastique has not been heard in combination with its vocal sequel Lelio since the early 1960s, and John Eliot Gardiner, as conductor of his own romantic and revolutionary orchestra will bring special authority to this arresting double-bill.
The 50th anniversary of the Edinburgh Festival Chorus is being thoroughly celebrated, with a performance of Sibelius’s vast Kullervo Symphony by the RSNO under Edward Gardner and with Beethoven’s Missa Solemnis as the festival’s climax.. Carlo Maria Giulini, who once conducted it here, had held back from this mountain range of a work until he felt “mature” enough to perform it, but young Robin Ticciati, undaunted by its challenges, is surely the right sort of novice to explore its subtleties.
A concert performance of The Pirates of Penzance by Scottish Opera, conducted by that master of Bachian baroquerie Richard Egarr, looks like being the joker in the pack, but the Royal Scottish Conservatoire’s concert performance of Stravinsky’s Rake’s Progress will surely run it a close second.
The opening concert, by the BBC SSO and Donald Runnicles, prefaces Strauss’sEin Heldenleben with rare nuggets of Brahms. nuggets of Brahms with Strauss’s Ein Heldenleben.
6 February 2015
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