Edinburgh comes ninth in this year’s list of the ten best classical music festivals in Britain assembled in yesterday’s edition of The Times. In churlish mood, I personally would feel inclined to place it tenth, on the strength of what The Times has called - with reference to Barry Humphries’ Weimar Cabaret at the Usher Hall - the blurring of the image between the original festival and the fringe.
Gone are the days when you could open the festival brochure with a real sense of unblurred anticipation, knowing that, at the very least, your batteries would be recharged by the forthcoming event. This year it all looks depressingly like the mixture as before, with hardly a glimmer of genuine novelty value of the sort supplied by Lord Harewood or Peter Diamand back in the1960s. Not since Brian McMaster - though even he could show a dispiriting reliance on package deals - has the festival seemed really worth its salt.
Operatically, what was once one of the world’s great festivals grows thinner and thinner. What’s new? Three performances of what looks like being an oversexed new Cosi Fan Tutte from Aix-en-Provence hardly seem likely to fill the bill. For all its greatness, what was once the most underrated of Mozart’s major operas has now become the most overplayed and and increasingly distorted.
Three performances of Bellini’s Norma from Salzburg with Cecilia Bartoli look more promising, but what of the single concert performance of a Russian Rheingold conducted by Valery Gergiev at the Usher Hall? Where is the rest of the Ring? Of all the works in Wagner’s cycle, Rheingold is the one that does not stand on its own feet - particularly in a concert performance - and this event seems unlikely to be more than a titillation. Scottish Opera, which once staged the entire cycle as the entity it was intended to be, is conspicuously absent this year.
At Greyfriars Kirk, the Hebrides Ensemble’s performance of Hans Zender’s orchestration of Winterreise will be the latest unnecessary attempt to transform Schubert’s searing song cycle into something more operatic.
As for the Usher Hall concerts, what else do we have? In such large-scale surroundings, Bach’s St Matthew Passion seldom works effectively - remember how laborious it seemed even with Claudio Abbado as conductor? - and though John Eliot Gardiner’s performance should be as good as they come it would be better heard at Canongate Kirk or the Queen’s Hall. Only the potential size of the audience will justify such a rendition, but much of the work’s impact will inevitably be lost.
Sir Antonio Pappano’s two programmes with Rome’s Santa Cecilia Orchestra, including Rossini’s Stabat Mater, will be better suited to these premises as will Gardiner’s evening devoted more sombrely to Schumann’s Manfred. But Edward Gardiner’s account of Elgar’s Apostles with the Royal Scottish National Orchestra - its only festival appearance so far as I can discern - is strictly for devout Elgarians, and the BBC SSO’s Boulez memorial concert, featuring a movement from Pli Selon Pli along with some Debussy and Berg, will only bring back memories of more startling days, when Boulez was around to do these things himself.
Marin Alsop’s programme of Villa-Lobos, Bernstein and Shostakovich with the Sao Paulo Symphony Orchestra looks like something swiped from the London proms, but Robin Ticciati’s complete Berlioz Romeo and Juliet with the Scottish Chamber Orchestra will surely be pure gold - a real Edinburgh Festival event, something not to be missed amid so much that seems routine.
Mahler’s Ninth and Tenth symphonies from the Swedish Radio Symphony Orchestra and Rotterdam Philharmonic need to form part of a more complete Mahler survey to make their point but will be welcome all the same, since both of them are still rarities in Scotland.
An air of routine again hangs over the concerts by the Russian National Orchestra and Leipzig Gewandhaus, but Pohjola’s Daughter from Oskar Vanska, the Minnesota Orchestra’s Sibelius authority, should shine as something special, even if it lacks a symphony to back it up.
And where’s Runnicles, as a longer-estabished Scottish music blog might put it? He is saying farewell to the BBC SSO in the festival’s closing performance of Schoenberg’s Gurrelieder - a great event at last and something much to look forward to.
The Queen’s Hall as usual will keep its own flag flying with an array of morning recitals with the look of a separate little festival within a festival, with connoisseur appeal. Don’t miss the Dunedin Consort’s Handel programme with Danielle de Niese as soloist. So the day has not yet come when I shall advise sidestepping the festival altogether. But I fear it is getting closer.
17 April 2016
Gone are the days when you could open the festival brochure with a real sense of unblurred anticipation, knowing that, at the very least, your batteries would be recharged by the forthcoming event. This year it all looks depressingly like the mixture as before, with hardly a glimmer of genuine novelty value of the sort supplied by Lord Harewood or Peter Diamand back in the1960s. Not since Brian McMaster - though even he could show a dispiriting reliance on package deals - has the festival seemed really worth its salt.
Operatically, what was once one of the world’s great festivals grows thinner and thinner. What’s new? Three performances of what looks like being an oversexed new Cosi Fan Tutte from Aix-en-Provence hardly seem likely to fill the bill. For all its greatness, what was once the most underrated of Mozart’s major operas has now become the most overplayed and and increasingly distorted.
Three performances of Bellini’s Norma from Salzburg with Cecilia Bartoli look more promising, but what of the single concert performance of a Russian Rheingold conducted by Valery Gergiev at the Usher Hall? Where is the rest of the Ring? Of all the works in Wagner’s cycle, Rheingold is the one that does not stand on its own feet - particularly in a concert performance - and this event seems unlikely to be more than a titillation. Scottish Opera, which once staged the entire cycle as the entity it was intended to be, is conspicuously absent this year.
At Greyfriars Kirk, the Hebrides Ensemble’s performance of Hans Zender’s orchestration of Winterreise will be the latest unnecessary attempt to transform Schubert’s searing song cycle into something more operatic.
As for the Usher Hall concerts, what else do we have? In such large-scale surroundings, Bach’s St Matthew Passion seldom works effectively - remember how laborious it seemed even with Claudio Abbado as conductor? - and though John Eliot Gardiner’s performance should be as good as they come it would be better heard at Canongate Kirk or the Queen’s Hall. Only the potential size of the audience will justify such a rendition, but much of the work’s impact will inevitably be lost.
Sir Antonio Pappano’s two programmes with Rome’s Santa Cecilia Orchestra, including Rossini’s Stabat Mater, will be better suited to these premises as will Gardiner’s evening devoted more sombrely to Schumann’s Manfred. But Edward Gardiner’s account of Elgar’s Apostles with the Royal Scottish National Orchestra - its only festival appearance so far as I can discern - is strictly for devout Elgarians, and the BBC SSO’s Boulez memorial concert, featuring a movement from Pli Selon Pli along with some Debussy and Berg, will only bring back memories of more startling days, when Boulez was around to do these things himself.
Marin Alsop’s programme of Villa-Lobos, Bernstein and Shostakovich with the Sao Paulo Symphony Orchestra looks like something swiped from the London proms, but Robin Ticciati’s complete Berlioz Romeo and Juliet with the Scottish Chamber Orchestra will surely be pure gold - a real Edinburgh Festival event, something not to be missed amid so much that seems routine.
Mahler’s Ninth and Tenth symphonies from the Swedish Radio Symphony Orchestra and Rotterdam Philharmonic need to form part of a more complete Mahler survey to make their point but will be welcome all the same, since both of them are still rarities in Scotland.
An air of routine again hangs over the concerts by the Russian National Orchestra and Leipzig Gewandhaus, but Pohjola’s Daughter from Oskar Vanska, the Minnesota Orchestra’s Sibelius authority, should shine as something special, even if it lacks a symphony to back it up.
And where’s Runnicles, as a longer-estabished Scottish music blog might put it? He is saying farewell to the BBC SSO in the festival’s closing performance of Schoenberg’s Gurrelieder - a great event at last and something much to look forward to.
The Queen’s Hall as usual will keep its own flag flying with an array of morning recitals with the look of a separate little festival within a festival, with connoisseur appeal. Don’t miss the Dunedin Consort’s Handel programme with Danielle de Niese as soloist. So the day has not yet come when I shall advise sidestepping the festival altogether. But I fear it is getting closer.
17 April 2016
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