Edinburgh International Festival 2013

[aeolium]

The other major summer festival starts today. Unfortunately I am unable to go up to see anything this year but would be interested in learning about what those visiting see as the highlights, what events they plan to see.

The festival brochure is here. The Beckett items look interesting, and Coriolanus and Metamorphosis in Mandarin (anyone going?) Some good concerts including some HIPP Schubert symphonies. I've no idea which ones are planned for R3 broadcast but I hope we get a lot of the chamber music and recitals.

[french frank]

I found this list of live broadcasts.

In fact, details published:

The following concerts will be broadcast live on BBC Radio 3

12 August
Chiaroscuro Quartet

13 August
Bernada Fink, Anthony Spiri

14 August
Nicola Boud, Sabine Devieilhe, Jane Gower, Sophie Gent, Kristian Bezuidenhout

16 August
Werner Güra, Christoph Berner

19 August
Dorothea Röschmann, Malcolm Martineau

20 August
Nachtmusique

21 August
Christophe Rousset, Les Talens Lyriques

22 August
Midori

23 August
Pierre-Laurent Aimard

26 August
Hebrides Ensemble, Thomas Bloch

27 August
Arditti Quartet

28 August
Zukerman Chamber Players

29 August
Andreas Scholl, Tamar Halperin

30 August
Véronique Gens, Susan Manoff

The following concerts will be broadcast on BBC Radio 3 at a future date

10 August
20th Century Classics
This concert will be broadcast on BBC Radio 3 at a future date.

16 August
Chamber Orchestra of Europe
This concert will be broadcast on 9 September at 7.30pm

18 August
Chamber Orchestra of Europe
This concert wil be broadcast on 10 September at 7.30pm

21 August
Pierre Laurent Aimard, Marco Stroppa, Samuel Favre
This concert will be broadcast on 21 August at 10.30pm

31 August
Verdi Requiem
This concert will be broadcast on 11 September at 7.30pm

[aeolium]

Looks good - thanks, ff.

[teamsaint]

Caught a lump of the Chiaroscuoro concert this morning. I am afraid that the period instruments (assuming that they were) didn't survive transmission through my car radio too well, and it sounded badly undercooked in parts.
Probably needs listening to on better kit. Comments from the Violinist Pablo Benedi at least teetered on the interesting, if only fleetingly.

[Tony Halstead]

Hmm.... the Chiaroscuro 4tet does indeed play period instruments but - at least as they were heard at the English Haydn Festival this year - in very much a 20th/ 21st century romantic style.

Nevertheless they are a real 'classy act' in live perfomance, some of their players walking around, much to the delight of their audience, but, 'authentic' they ain't, compared to e.g. the London Haydn, Eroica and Salomon 4tets.

[teamsaint]

Hmm.... the Chiaroscuro 4tet does indeed play period instruments but - at least as they were heard at the English Haydn Festival this year - in very much a 20th/ 21st century romantic style.

Nevertheless they are a real 'classy act' in live perfomance, some of their players walking around, much to the delight of their audience, but, 'authentic' they ain't, compared to e.g. the London Haydn, Eroica and Salomon 4tets.

Waldo, I really just wanted to draw attention to the concert as much as anything.....me making a judgement listening on my car radio during a days work is no kind of use really.....
So many lunchtime concerts seem to go unremarked on the board. I did think about starting a general thread for quick comments, and flagging up.

[aeolium]

Good point about the lunchtime concerts, team, and I am really pleased to see R3 reverting to broadcasting EIF concerts at 11 am as they used to do (and with the Cheltenham Festival concerts) a few years ago. It makes it worth listening to R3 in the (late) mornings again.

I didn't particularly care for the way the Chiaroscuro played, but credit to R3 for the chance to have another chamber music concert to listen to as well as the lunchtime concert.

[David-G]

Just returned from a wonderful week in Edinburgh. I was at the Queens Hall for the Chiaroscuro concert, and enjoyed it very much - particularly the Mozart K428, which I found very moving. I somehow did not get so much from the Schubert, but it might have been that I was not in such a receptive mood after the interval. I will listen to it again.

They signed programmes and CDs afterwards (each with a different-coloured pen!). One of them charmingly had her 18-month-old daughter on her lap.

[pastoralguy]

Mrs. PG and I have been at a few EIF concerts so far and have enjoyed them all. Highlights? Well, we enjoyed Les Musicians de Louvre under Mark Minkowski playing Schubert's 3rd & 9th (8th?!) symphony's and then marvelled as they played the first movement of the 'Unfinished' as an encore! Very fine playing and lots of exuberance from the conductor! (We were disappointed to see Richard Morrison give I only 2 stars in the 'Times').

[Padraig]

Waldo, I really just wanted to draw attention to the concert as much as anything.....me making a judgement listening on my car radio during a days work is no kind of use really.....
So many lunchtime concerts seem to go unremarked on the board. I did think about starting a general thread for quick comments, and flagging up.

I like your idea, ts, of drawing attention to the LTCs. Though the 11 to 1 slot for Edinburgh does not suit me, I sometimes get to hear the last 15 or 20 minutes, as I did today and caught the final two of The Four Last Songs. Those songs were composed when I was 12, and it was only when I was in my sixties, or maybe seventies, that I first heard them - perhaps the best time to make their acquaintance. If you want spirituality without religion then listen to those larks at sunset and enjoy the comfort and serenity of the passing away of life.

[aeolium]

I very much enjoyed last Friday's song-recital by Werner Güra accompanied by Christoph Berner in Beethoven and Schubert songs. I particularly liked Auf der Bruck, a song I didn't know, and the concluding Willkommen und Abschied. Heidenröslein I thought over-interpreted, almost conferring a tragic quality to the third stanza, but this was a slight quibble about a generally wonderful recital. It's still available on the i-player for another three days.

Also well worth hearing was Dorothea Röschmann's recital yesterday (with Malcolm Martineau) of Schumann's Liederkreis, some of Wolf's mercurial songs and Berg's Seven Early Songs.

[Padraig]

Also well worth hearing was Dorothea Röschmann's recital yesterday (with Malcolm Martineau) of Schumann's Liederkreis, some of Wolf's mercurial songs and Berg's Seven Early Songs.

The Four Last Songs that I referred to previously were in addition to this recital, and are included here:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b038l2y1

[Flosshilde]

Mozart wind music 20th August

I very much enjoyed this concert. Mozart isn't usually my top composer (the very opposite, in fact) but I think I'd make an exception for the Gran Partita.

[Tony Halstead]

'The Innocent ear': I listened having missed the first half (a pity as I would have loved to have heard the Horn Duets!) and not knowing who the performers were, heard the whole of the 'Serenade K361' formerly known as the '13 wind' whereas it is actually the '12 wind plus double bass'.
Mvt 1: the slow introduction was lovely and majestic. The reedy timbre of the oboe and the woody quality of the clarinet told me immediately that this was a 'period instrument' perfomance.
The tempo of the Allegro that followed seemed a bit slow, even 'stodgy' at first but I soon got used to it and began to hear details that I hadn't heard before, e.g. some trills with 'terminations' that had previously been glossed over in some performances. On the negative side, there were some areas of 'untogetherness' that showed that the perfomance was not conducted but 'directed' by one of the players.
Then
A lovely. elegant reading of the 1st Minuet but the recorded sound balance ( very dry and 'close' in what I have previously believed to be a warm and spacious acoustic in the Queens' Hall) gave very little presence to the horn section.
In the heavenly slow movement ( 'immortalised' in the film 'Amadeus') I found it very difficult to warm to the exceptionally 'straight' and vibrato-less 1st oboe tone, but about halfway through the piece it started to make sense and at the end it was breathtakingly pure.
I was distracted by 'other things' in the next few movements but very much enjoyed the variations and the Finale.
Not a performance to please every listener but notable for the outstanding 1st clarinet playing ( with several lovely ornamentations of the text) and the very brave oboe playing that didn't try to hide the occasional intonation issue behind an excessive vibrato as happens often with 'modern' oboists.
I have been lucky enough to have played this masterpiece maybe 50 times in my life, using both 'modern' and 'period' instruments, and have conducted it a handful of times.
Today's performance was absolutely 'top drawer' period instrument playing and I congratulate the musicians of 'Nachtmusique' and their Director, the 1st clarinettist Eric Hoeprich.

[Master Jacques]

Today's really outstanding Midori Bach/Schnittke solo violin recital from the Edinburgh Festival has just been RUINED by sticking on Shostakovich's 2nd Piano Concerto in the interval.

This cancerous spread of filling up intervals with irrelevant music instead of words (or just as good, silence!) really has to STOP!

And did nobody bother to notice that we'll be getting precisely this same Piano Concerto in tomorrow's Prom?

Really, it seems time for R3 to get their programming act together. A little thought would be a good way to start, added to a little less contempt for their audience, and a lot more imagination.

You will gather that I am really cross! It has spoiled what was a splendid live recital.