Edinburgh International Festival

After the setbacks and the multi-million pound cost over-runs, the new wing at the Usher Hall is ready to be unveiled to the world. From tomorrow people will be able to explore the much-awaited new addition to the grade A-listed building, which completes the £25 million, second phase of refurbishment of the Lothian Road concert hall.

The flagship Edinburgh International Festival (EIF), a high-brow assembly of some of the world's best opera, theatre, and ballet companies, was launched in 1947 as a stage for peace and unity in Europe after the Second World War. It was out of the Festival that the now massive Edinburgh Fringe sprung and grew in subsequent years.

The last witch burning in Scotland in the early 18th century, enacted at this year's Edinburgh International Festival, has an uncomfortable resonance 300 years later with an all-too-familiar tale of superstition, torture and brutality.

An estimated 220,000 people across the Scottish capital enjoyed the explosive finale to this year's Edinburgh International Festival and the summer festival season last night, the BoS Festival Fireworks Concert.

Tram works on Princes Street meant that many couldn't get as close as they wanted to the centrepoint of the show, Edinburgh Castle, but new vantage points were introduced and local radio stations Forth One and Forth 2 broadcast the concert live on the night, as in previous years.

Celebrating its 40th birthday (and a new £11 million Glasgow home), it is timely indeed for Scottish Ballet to be invited back to the EIF with a triple bill spanning 60 years of classical ballet and contemporary dance.

"All children, except one, grow up. Mrs. Darling put her hand to her heart and cried, "Oh, why can't you remain like this for ever!"  Wendy knew that she must grow up. You always know after you are two. Two is the beginning of the end."

"Peter Pan: (or The Boy Who Wouldn't Grow Up)," J M Barrie's most famous play was rewritten in 1911 as a novel, "Peter and Wendy". Rather than being just an adventure story for children, it can be read as a self help guide for adults

Ivo Pogorelich excites debate and controversy today as much as he did in 1980 at the Fryderyk Chopin Piano Competition when Martha Argerich left the jury in protest when the young Croatian pianist was eliminated in the 3rd round. She described him then as a genius. Purists may disagree.

Walking down to my seat in the front stalls, I quickly see that the Playhouse is packed up to the Gods.

Afterplay, written by Brian Friel, is most unusual in that he has taken characters from two familiar Chekhov plays and created a scenario in which these two strangers strike up a conversation in a Russian café.

Three of the "most innovative theatre makers" at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe this year were announced as winners of the Edinburgh International Festival Fringe Prize 2009 today. The three are The River People, David Leddy (pictured), and Inspector Sands.

Brian Friel's play, The Yalta Game, is based on a short story by Anton Chekhov, The Lady with the Lapdog, that tells of a holiday affair between an older married man and a young married woman while they are both on holiday alone.

The final allocation of tickets for the Bank of Scotland Fireworks Concert go on sale on Sunday 30 August at 10.00am, only from the counter of Hub Tickets at The Hub Edinburgh.

Haydn's Symphony No 70 in D was written to celebrate the start of the construction of a new opera house on the Eszterhaza estate following a fire. It is about optimism and confidence in the future and Garry Walker conducted the Scottish Chamber Orchestra in a way that made us feel good.

Every morning throughout the Edinburgh International Festival there is a chamber concert at the Queen's Hall.

Under the big blue bosses of the Hub's, fine yellow blue and red ceiling (sadly hidden to accommodate theatre lighting) the audience gathered for a terpsichorean evening with Scotland's early music group, Concerto Caledonia. Their aim was to "present...tunes from the world of Scottish dance music before the fiddle took over."

The Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment make you listen again to Haydn.

Under Sir Roger Norrington they put an energy and pace into an all-Haydn evening at the Usher Hall on Saturday (22 August) that shook any dust off the audience's conception of the 18th century composer.

Silviu Purcarete's freely adapted version of Goethe's Faust, held in an aircraft hangar sized hall at the Royal Highland Centre at Ingliston, was nothing short of spectacular theatre. It was billed as one of the flagship shows of the Edinburgh International Festival and certainly did not disappoint.

Inverleith Park and Calton Hill are being recommended by the council as the best public places to view the Bank of Scotland Fireworks Concert this year due to the closure of much of Princes Street for laying of the Edinburgh tram tracks.

Born in 1809 into an affluent, intellectual Jewish family who converted to Christianity, Felix Mendelssohn displayed a musical precocity from an early age.  A prodigious composer he had already wr

See, the conqu'ring hero comes!

Handel's oratorio tells of the triumph of the Jewish warrior-hero Judas Maccabaeus over the invading enemies of the Israelites, part of the decaying Seleucid empire famous for its army of 500 elephants. Thomas Morell's libretto is taken from the first eight chapters of the first Book of Maccabees. The arias, recitatives and choruses take note of victories and setbacks, but other than for the fall of Apollonius, do not describe them.