THIS summer's Edinburgh International Festival (EIF) had a theme
of war and conflict. The centenary of the First World War was but a
starting-point.
The opening concert was Debussy's Le Martyre de Saint
Sébastien, dating from 1911. It was played alongside
Schoenberg's Five Pieces for Orchestra, Op. 16, and Scriabin's
Prometheus, the Poem of Fire: not a piano concerto, but an
orchestral piece with a significant part for piano (soloist Kirill
Gerstein). The common link between the pieces was the time of their
composition and their varying exotic sound-worlds. Each piece was
well conducted by Oliver Knussen, better known as a composer.
Despite the male subject-matter, the role of Saint Sébastien was
sung by a woman: Claire Booth. The other two soloists were Claire
McCaldin and Polly May. The remaining forces were those of the
Royal Scottish National Orchestra and the Edinburgh Festival
Chorus. While being beautifully orchestrated and employing full and
divided choruses with good use of the three female soloists, this
was not, I found, a satisfying piece. All too often the luxuriant
orchestration was at odds with the gruesome nature of the
texts.
My second visit to the Usher Hall was a triumph of unaccompanied
choral singing from The Sixteen. There were 36 singers listed in
the programme, and I am sure we heard each of them at some point
during the concert. Harry Christophers presented us with a real
"cut, copy, and paste" programme of works by one composer sometimes
interleaved with those of another.
Christophers is a master of the harmonic blend. Each piece sat
naturally with the one before and the one after. He also knows how
to achieve tonal balance, and how to place individual singers
within the group to create solid or antiphonal effects.
This was a concert of seamless artistry. Works by Josquin,
Sheppard, Poulenc, and Taverner followed one upon another. For me,
the undoubted highlight was the closing piece: Poulenc's Figure
Humaine. It is a paean of joy celebrating the end of the
Second World War. The length of the text can seem daunting, but
hardly a line of it is repeated, and the pace is brisk throughout.
Sometimes it is a fast staccato, dreamily floating, lyrical,
ethereal, or skipping. The Sixteen can be very versatile
indeed.
Another great night in the Usher Hall was provided by Jordi
Savall and Hespèrion XXI, Le Concert des Nations, and La Capella
Reial de Catalunya. This was early music in big-band mode. The
photo shown above is of a performance of the same concert given in
another venue. The platform of the Usher Hall allowed a more
spacious layout, and no doubt a more open sound.
The concert was a celebration of Europe during the Baroque era,
1614-1714: from the Thirty Years War to the Peace of Utrecht: the
end of the war of Spanish Succession. It served as a history of
European music during this period, including works by Scheidt,
Schein, Jenkins, Lully, Charpentier, Blow. and Handel, among
others.
The effect was that of a tapestry in sound. Instrumental marches
were followed by choruses supported by full orchestra, delicate
quartets from the four orchestral soloists at the front of the
platform, and pieces for unaccompanied or lightly accompanied vocal
soloists. It was an evening of stirring and delicate sounds. I was
left energised and emboldened to go out and discover more of the
music from this period.
THE first of my visits to Greyfriars Kirk was to hear Sister
Marie Keyrouz from Lebanon. She was accompanied by members of her
group The Ensemble de la Paix, founded during the bombing of
Lebanon in 1984.
On this occasion, it consisted of six male singers providing
stark contrast to Sister Marie's clear, clean, and powerful voice.
When I first reviewed her in these pages some years ago, I was
mesmerised and in awe. On this my second opportunity to hear her, I
was elated. My memory was not shattered. The sound was as pure, as
rich as I had remembered it.
This has been a bad year for printed programmes at the EIF. For
this concert, the texts were printed only in English. This made it
impossible to hear or follow the them as they were sung. This is a
great shame, because the performance included the Cherubic Hymn
(from the Divine Liturgies of St Basil and St John Chrysostom),
extracts from the Aramaic and Maronite Marian traditions, and the
Alleluia: Exapostilarion from the Bridegroom Matins of
Holy Week (Byzantine Melkite tradition). It is a shame not to be
able to follow and understand a performance. I bought a CD as a
retrospective aid.
My Greyfriars series continued with a concert by the Polish
Radio Choir consisting of alternating settings of Górecki and
Penderecki. This is a very talented choir, currently nurtured and
conducted by Izabela Polakowska. She is herself an accomplished
singer, but her skill as a choral conductor is obvious.
The first piece by Górecki was Totus Tuus, a Marian
chant composed for the third pilgrimage of Pope John Paul II to his
native country in 1987. It opens quietly and simply and in the
closing words, "Totus tuus sum, Maria!" drifts quietly off
into contemplative silence.
This was followed by Penderecki's Missa Brevis. The
conducting here helped to balance light and shade in the choral
parts, where some were for women only, and others for men only. The
Gloria had a spiky feel to it, with little repetition of the text,
but much overlapping of the lines. The Agnus Dei was, in turn, full
and strong, dreamy or strident, and ending in peaceful and ethereal
tones. Also included was one of Górecki's Marian pieces: "Hail,
Mary", with bright open and airy textures.
Next up were the Ricercar Consort, with a concert of music from
the Thirty Years War by Scheidt and Schütz. At first, I wondered
whether this was going to be just another one of those concerts. I
was wrong. The interspersing of instrumental intradas and canzons
between the choral sections were well chosen, and helped to set the
tone for the music that was to follow. The five singers produced a
good variety, and blended well with each other. The highlight of
the concert for me was Schütz's setting of Herzlich lieb hab
ich dich, O Herr (I will love thee, O Lord: Psalm 18) for solo
alto, two violins, and continuo. The vocal soloist was supported
well by the continuo and ethereal effects on the upper strings.
THE Usher Hall was the setting for a choral concert by Collegium
Vocale Gent with the Scottish Chamber Orchestra, conducted by
Phillipe Herreweghe. I have been a great fan of this choral group
and conductor for many years. The three pieces of unaccompanied
Bruckner were for me the highlight.
The concert opened with a stark and rather rigid performance of
Haydn's "Nelson" Mass. It was undoubtedly well performed, but did
not warm my heart or sustain my soul. Perhaps I was just having an
off night. Stravinsky's Symphony of Psalms, scored without
violins or violas, has a solid depth of sound, giving a good
contrast for the choral contributions. Again, this was a good
account of the piece but my spirits were not raised. Bruckner's
Ave Maria, Christus factus est, and Os
Justi were where the choir shone and exhibited their tonal
opulence to best advantage.
Concerto Italiano performed the last concert I attended at
Greyfriars. It consisted of choral music by Monteverdi and
orchestral interludes by Marini, Uccelini, Merulla, and Castello.
It was the standard format of an orchestral piece followed by a
choral piece. The concert finished with a performance of
Monteverdi's Il Combattimento di Tancredi e Clorinda. The
soloists were Anna Simboli, soprano, and Gianluca Ferrarini and
Luca Dordolo, tenors. The tenor voices were not different enough.
Without following the text, one might not have realised that one
was hearing two different characters. Perhaps my knowledge of this
period of singing is poor. I did not enjoy it: not even the mixture
of soprano and tenor in Tancredi e Clorinda.
THE Royal Scottish National Orchestra were back on the platform of
the Usher Hall, conducted by John Axelrod for a performance of
Leonard Bernstein's Kaddish (Symphony No. 3). The opener
for this concert was Barber's Violin Concerto. The interplay
between the soloist and the orchestra was finely judged, and Vadim
Gluzman gave a disciplined and authoritative performance as
soloist.
The Bernstein performance was perhaps a travesty. Like the
Barber, it was conducted by John Axelrod. He has made a commercial
recording of this work. I am not familiar with the recording. This
performance was, however, tweaked, the text being spun to reflect
the particular perspective of a Holocaust survivor. This strikes me
as rather strange, as Bernstein laboured to create a text with
which he was happy. For the Tel Aviv première, Bernstein had his
text translated into Hebrew, while the American première used his
original English words. He later amended the text making it able to
be delivered by a man or a woman.
The programme note rather lamely suggests that this work, like
other large-scale Bernstein works has no clear directive or
definitive form.
The Kaddish is scored for large orchestra, narrator,
and soprano soloist. The soprano, Rebecca Evans sang with strength
and conviction in her sections with the Edinburgh Festival Chorus
and the National Youth Choir of Scotland National Girls Choir. The
soprano part is small but makes a crucial contribution to this
work.
The part of the narrator is virtually omnipresent. For this
performance, narration was written and spoken by Samuel Pisar, a
survivor of Auschwitz. According to the programme, he was a friend
of Bernstein. Pisar's narration dates from 2003.
The narration in the printed programme was copyrighted to Pisar
in 2014. I was, therefore, astonished that on several occasions
during the performance, sections of his spoken narration were not
printed, and large sections of what was in the programme were not
narrated by Pisar.
The musical performance was of a high standard. The complex
score, with much percussion, was clear, clean, and well balanced: a
good result in the unforgiving acoustic of the Usher Hall. The
choral singing was subtle. The wordless mutter that underpins the
opening remarks of the speaker had great effect. This is a noisy
score with great orchestral outbursts, perhaps representing
religious wailing, the loudest of which comes at the opening of the
finale.
I was left nonplussed by the muddled text. A small minority of
the audience gave a standing ovation while Pisar basked in the
limelight and Evans was relegated to a spot on the platform almost
directly behind him. There was a keen sense that this was a one-man
show.
I SAW only one play in the Fringe this year. The subject-matter
was drawn from Flaubert's La Tentation de Saint Antoine:
The Temptation of St Anthony. One of the earliest lines in the play
is: "Is this the one from Padua?" That may have been a game-changer
for some in the audience. The play was actually about St Anthony of
Egypt: a disciple of Paul of Thebes, who withdrew for solitude to a
mountain near the Nile called Pisir. During that time, he was
troubled in his mind by the devil. He withstood many temptations
and chal- lenges.
Teatro Cassone performed, in association with Mermaids, the
Performing Arts Fund of the University of St Andrews. The style was
what one might call contemporary burlesque. It had minimal props,
but the characters all had arresting costumes. The performance
style was full: there were no subtleties. St Anthony was played
with grim despair by Adam Ishaque, notably in his scenes with death
and the devil. Other characters were shared among the cast. Crowd
scenes were conjured up by the use of hand puppets. The performance
was over-long at one hour and 15 minutes. Some editing and greater
interaction between characters will make a more engaging and
convincing show.
More informally, I attended a variety of musical events at Old
St Paul's Church, the Roman Catholic Metropolitan Cathedral, and
the Episcopal Cathedral. The impressive factor at these venues is
the sincerity and passion in the performances. They are always
relaxing, and always a pleasure.