Reviews

Alcina
Venue Edinburgh Festival Theatre
Reviewer Colin Donati

We live in a world that has only a pale belief in magic, most sense of gods, spirits and angels abolished. Our rationalist, existential sense of lone individual identity is the realm into which Stuttgart State Opera radically transmute the magical elements of Handel's Alcina. They take the line that the 18th century composer can only have regarded the witchcraft side of his libretto as a mere device to stage confusing adulterous relationships and avoid Hanoverian censorship. Never mind that this rationalist age still witnessed such potent belief in the supernatural that witches were yet being burned. Our Handel, in his mid fifties, might just have been looking right past all that.

Taken straight, the libretto remodels a story from Orlando Furioso and is, in effect, an Enlightenment age take on a 'fairy tale' plot. Alcina is a sorceress who keeps unfortunate visitors bound to her island under a spell. But, in love with Ruggiero (one of her victims) she loses this power. The idea of such a loss, such a failure of magic, together with an ending that (supposedly) shows triumphal liberation from its thrall, is the central idea.

Or perhaps her magic never existed? Even in the original concept, we never actually see Alcina employ her powers. This SSO production, in seeking the darker strata, locates the subterranean fault line of the opera and, giving it a wrench, radically contorts the original with surprising effect. All the characters and their situation remain recognisable. But instead of a magical island, Alcina's realm is the decayed interior of an immense room in an abandoned house. Instead of heroes on a quest to rescue their comrade from the spell of a wicked sorceress, we have wandering strangers in suits and ties who walk into uneasy arbitrary attachments, never quite sure where they stand with each other.

The vision and atmosphere, stunningly realised in Anna Viebrock's design, give the overall concept an authentic stamp right down to the high bare lightbulb, the hollow boards underfoot, the last musty artefacts left in one corner. An enormous mirror leans against the back wall upon which it was at one time mounted, as we can see from the patch of unfaded paper. It is the perfect magical device; at once true to the 18th century roots, yet absolutely modern and effective to convey the mysterious dimensions to the opera with compelling surreal force. And sure enough, illusions of crossing from one world to another, when they come, absolutely spellbind.

Catherine Naglestad, singing the central role, aims for a highly charged yet coolly ambiguous interpretation that fits the ethos perfectly. Is her Alcina really a sorceress with a history of magical powers - abilities to change people into animals - or simply a mortal woman, an innocent foil for the delusions of others, more offended against than offending? Her acting is superlative. As she gives voice to inner emotions, outwardly she moves with a flawless and uncanny naturalism that seems to give the lie, never less than an ordinary human being with ordinary joys, ultimately misdunderstood. It is a performance filled with self-effacing intrigue.

The biggest jolt of all is probably the treatment of the ending. The moment Alcina's power is finally exorcised and her spell lifts, what the 'liberated' characters lose seems far more than what they gain. Handel's triumphal chorus is lost as, instead, there is a sudden descent into chaos, anarchy, despair. Is this attempt to claim Handel for the 21st century convincing? Can the man really have been foreshadowing our fashionable existential crisis quite so graphically? Should it be right for the world of this opera, and particularly its ostensibly happy ending, to be so darkly wrenched askew? The ideas cut deep, but no matter where you stand on such questions, the resulting production is utterly fascinating. A most excellent production.

Runs 14, 16, 17 August.


András Schiff, piano: Bach English Suites 1, 3 and 5
Venue Usher Hall
Address Lothian Road
Reviewer Pat Napier

The Hungarian pianist András Schiff is now a well-loved and established favourite at the Edinburgh International Festival. In the first of two late night recitals in the newly-refurbished Usher Hall he played Numbers 1, 3 and 5 of J S Bach's Six English Suites.

Playing the splendid new Steinway piano, a very generous recent donation, he set a mood at once calm and contemplative, bringing out the singing quality of his instrument. These are obviously deeply meaningful to Schiff, for he performed them from memory and held his audience entranced.

Bach's English Suites (no-one knows exactly why they were so called) reveal his mastery of both the Italian and the French idioms, particularly in the dance movements. By the time he wrote the suites, they had become a firmly established pattern of dance sequences in Germany and, in the main, Bach follows that pattern. However, he also contrasts the movements with great subtlety and care giving us, in each suite, a satisfying musical experience. In the details, he reveals much, for example, his admiration of Vivaldi, especially in the the 3rd suite's courante which is full of splendid trills and chords.

In contrast to the harpsichord, the original instrument for which the suites were written, the piano's smoother action allows a magical interweaving of counterpoint, beautiful conversations between left and right hands and wonderful sound colours, all of which András Schiff shared with us.

Concludes.... Friday 25 August


Barbaric Comedies
Venue Kings Theatre
Address 2 Leven Street
Reviewer Thelma Good

The original Barbaric Comedies were a trilogy of plays written by Ramon Maria del Valle-Inclan. Frank McGuinness has written a new version which reduces the three into one play lasting, not the four and a half hours in the EIF programme, but three and three quarter hours. Divided by an interval after about two hours and a bit, this uneven play tells the story of the womanising Don Juan Manuel de Montenegro and his six sons, and their devastating effect on themselves and the people about them.

The direction by Calixto Bieito, of the actors of The Abbey Theatre, Dublin, particularly of the crowd scenes, is very skilful, though I question the almost complete lack of use of the first few metres of stage at the front. It was extremely rarely that the actors came forward of the proscenium arch, this reduced considerably the engagement of the audience with the characters on stage. Indeed I question whether this play is suited to this style of theatre space, and it might have worked far better in promenade or in the round or in a very large studio. The Assembly on the Mound, for instance, had it been available, might have suited it much better. The lighting, by Xavier Clot and Keith Yetton, was superb though, especially the scene at sea.

The first act is extremely long with about, I think, 30 scenes - I lost count! The second act was much tighter and went past very swiftly with much more dramatic drive. In the first act there was so much loveless coupling, nudity and one very graphic rape that the audience began to snigger at the repetitiveness at which trousers were dropped and genitals fondled. Not I think the effect the playwright was after. I did think that the two fool-like characters did add considerable interest to the play.

I left the theatre thinking I'd like to see the second act again, where sex didn't always get in the way of the action. But the first with its repetitive sexual barbarities lived up to the name of the play. With a cast of 23 actors the play, as structured, did not give enough space to develop characters sufficiently. The result was, especially in the first act, that it was extremely difficult to follow who was who, apart from the main roles. Though I think in the case of four of the brothers it was deliberate that they mainly came across as a pack. They were referred to more than once as a pack of dogs.

I think that this new version of the play just doesn't work in the first half, partly because the character development is abrupt rather than us seeing the transformation on stage. Additionally so little is shown or explained that I remained unmoved. Ramon del Valle-Ican said his plays were not really for performance but to be read, I think he may be right! As this version of the trilogy is being seen for the first time I am left with the feeling it wasn't ready to be produced. The most of the rest of the audience who stay to the end seemed underwhelmed too, even though those who left early did miss a good second act. I hope it is worked on further before it goes to Dublin.

On 16th to 20th and 23rd to 28th at 6.00pm

Conversation with Calixto Bieito, the director, on 16th. See programme for details Studyday on Sun 20th on The Theatre of Ramon del Valle-Inclan. See programme for details includes participants: Dr Maria Delgrado and Mark Ravenhill.


Cabin Pressure
Venue Lyceum Theatre
Address Grindlay St
Reviewer Thelma Good

The play is underway but the house lights are up? The actors are inside not one, but two proscenium arches and their voices and mannerisms are those of a period drama. And the fourth wall seems securely in place. The audience continues to tell their doings to their companions, watching the stage at times to see if anything might really be happening yet. The hubbub slowly dwindles and then as the house lights go down even the most persistent talkers finally are quiet. Then the scene starts again and the audience begins to laugh and engage with what is happening on stage.

This is a fascinating play about us, the audience and them, the actors and what happens when we share the same air in a performance. Far better than any dry academic lecture about theatre, this production excited and delighted the audience when I saw it last night and underlined the fact that theatre is not theatre if there is no audience. We are as necessary as the actors. As the play went on many approaches to theatre were explored and excerpts from plays, Albee's Whose Afraid Of Virginia Woolf? and Coward's Private Lives, were encountered during the journey in the play. The fourth wall was breached and the proscenium arches, showing clearly what differing effects theatrical conventions and acting styles bring to a production of a play.

One of the lines in the play is "theatre is an active culture, we don't lean back, we lean forward." Anne Bogart of SITI, New York, who conceived and directed the ensemble enabled a production process with devising work and a forum of audience members which has resulted in brilliant teaching for us. Will Bond, Ellen Lauren, Kelly Maurer, Barney O'Hanlon and Stephen Webber are the ensemble who play with the audience in delightful and enlightening styles, tremendous actors all of them.

By the end it is not clear where the audience is, or the actors; are we watching their performance or are they watching us? But we are in the theatre where everything is possible, the play has a line, "Do least on stage so that the imagination is released." There are some plays I have experienced this Fringe and Festival which could do with having this advice. This is not one of them. If you have ever been an audience member, this play is about you and me, how we are active in the production even when sitting down in the auditorium. Theatre is a place of magic where anything can happen, where there is danger and where there is no such thing as unstageable stage directions, just unfortunately stultified unimaginative directors or academics. Go along and see our selves as the others, the actors, see us, it's a great theatre essay which you'll understand effortlessly.

On till 22nd, matinee 22nd also


Don Juan
Venue Lyceum Theatre
Address Cambridge St
Reviewer Thelma Good

This production was outstanding! Mats Ek directed a wonderful mixed cast of dancers and actors who took Moliere's Don Juan and made it both funny and moving to watch. Mikael Persbrandt, in the title role of Don Juan, sensuously moved through the production not only seducing the people on stage but all of us watching. Niklas Ek both dancer and actor ( and the director's brother), in the role of Sganarelle, Don Juan's servant also gave us an engaging character who knew his Master too well.

Vibrant playing by the whole cast with beautiful choreographed dances which moved the action on, showed again and again that this director who has brought us wonderful ballet can make plays extraordinary too. The play just zipped along and the audience returned eagerly to the second half wreathed in smiles, knowing we were in for more inventiveness than one usually encounters in a dozen top quality productions. A finger became a pistol, Donna Elvira, Don Juan's only true love experienced multiple orgasms in an office chair which whizzed her off to ecstasy and back for more. The best scene changes ever too, even they got applause and laughter. It was a blast!

The whole of the stage was used and the audience too, for we became the statues in the Commander's Mausoleum in one scene. From the start we were in the play, the fourth wall was never there. We were not mere spectators but at one with the actors. Delight is a strange thing to take away from a play which is about the destruction by a man of himself. It was true though to the nature of Don Juan, the man. He delighted and charmed those who met him so that we didn't want him to change or to lose his reckless nature. It was a great shame that this production was only here for three nights. I hope so much that you caught it.

Run ended too soon.


Genoveva
Company Opera North
Venue Kings Theatre 31st of August
Reviewer Ian Gilmour

Schumann's "Genoveva" had a muted reception when he conducted its Leipzig premiere in 1850 and the run ended after a further two performances. It never entered the standard opera repertoire and has rarely been staged in the 150 years since. Judging by the reception for Opera North's production at the Kings Theatre, it is difficult to fathom the reason.

For many of the first night audience, "Genoveva" was the operatic hit of this year's Edinburgh Festival. Despite a verbose libretto - largely Schumann's hand after falling out with the author tasked with retelling the medieval tale of Genevieve of Brabant - and a trite plot, the composer's genius as a lieder writer shone through. Dispensing with conventional recitative links, Schumann largely relied on orchestral passages to move the dramatic action forward. Striking costumes for the Christian soldiers going off to fight the Moors, simple sets and imaginative lighting, enhanced sensitive singing by the principals. Virtue triumphs in the end as witchcraft is defeated. Genoveva is saved at the last minute by her faith in the Cross when her husband Siegfried rediscovers her purity. Golo, her betrayer and would-be seducer flees, and the reunited couple return to a triumphal reception from victorious returned troops in their castle.

Round on round of applause marked the curtain calls. Leaving the theatre, a leading music critic said the successful performance showed the fatuity of the widely-held view that symphonic composers couldn't - and didn't --write good operas.


Fairy Lore and the Supernatural : 29 August 2000. Scots and their Songs Series
Company Arthur Cormack, singer; Elspeth Cowie, singer; Maureen Jelks, singer; Allan MacDonald, small pipes; David McGuinness; Stanley Robertson, storyteller; Margaret Stewart, singer; Wendy Stewart, harp
Venue The Hub
Address Castlehill, Edinburgh
Reviewer Pat Napier

When the lights went down in the Main Hall of the Hub and the first singers stood up to weave their spell, the hall's rather brash neo-Pugin atmosphere melted away to change, for this reviewer at least, into a magic potion of memories: of traditional folk music in clubs, of Sandy Bell's in its heyday, of Highland cottage get-togethers, of Bill Hardie playing just for me and many more. And in a while I remembered that I was listening to music and song from deep in the Scottish tradition and consciousness in the old Highland Kirk, where many generations of Highlanders worshipped when in Edinburgh.

The magic of music and song to reach straight in and grab a hold of the subliminal stream of culture is powerful magic, speaking here directly to the Celtic soul. Elspeth Cowie was our guide into and around these tales, mostly drawn from the oral tradition but held together by songs from the Scots Musical Museum, which is the warp to the weft of all the songs in this fascinating series.

All of these musicians, without fuss, just stepped up and sang, mostly unaccompanied, in clear, beautiful tones but delightfully enriched when joined at various times by the small pipes, harp and fortepiano. Very soon, the music of my country was swirling round me: from the North East (offering, amongst other things, a North of Scotland version of the Border ballad The dowie dens o' Yarrow), then through hauntingly beautiful Gaelic melodies, up to Orkney to hear the ballad of The great silkie of Sule Skerrie, then back to the mainland for the second of two songs about the legendary water horse.

The music was intespersed with a couple of tales told in Stanley Robertson's glorious, but possibly difficult, North Eastern accent. His Strathdon Christmas with the Devil story will live with me for a long time.

Then it was back into the music again, but this time in a very different mood with Nancy's ghost rollicking and gyrating to Wendy Stewart's enchanting harp and David McGuinness' fortepiano, followed by a Gaelic fairy song and the haunting Fine floo'ers in the valley. Despatching us home was Maureen Jelks with The Cruel Mither, sending shivers up and down the spine as she talked to the ghosts of her children, murdered by her own hand, before spelling out her doom.

What powerful magic accompanied my mad dash down the eerie, deserted, atmospheric Lawnmarket to find my way home, inspired to learn more about my country's tales and legends.

Series ends... 1 September 2000.

Photographs: © Edinburgh International Festival


Hamlet
Venue The Royal Lyceum
Address 12 Grindlay Street
Reviewer Colin Donati

Deutsches Schauspielhaus's 'Hamlet', under the direction of Peter Zadek, dares to make a huge innovation in casting Angela Winkler in the title role. In short, it settles on a female interpretation of the male Hamlet.

One envisages that this is bound to have knock-on effects. But the deep shift in feel and tenor is much greater and more far-reaching than I had anticipated - and sometimes quite hard to adapt to. Whether this is due to the 'feminizing' of the role, or is really better explained by Angela Winkler's distinct and unusual performance - often almost intolerably subdued - the whole feel and balance of the play is affected. Most crucially of all, the way that her Hamlet has to interact emotionally with every other character - particularly in the most highly charged of scenes - shifts and skews our traditional expectations with some quite peculiar, though deeply interesting consequences.

But has it been justified? True, the overall shape remains recognisable. Characters and action are adhered to and interpreted in plausibly ' traditional' fashion with updated settings, while the German translation, I understand, strives to remain faithful to Shakespeare's language. One might have thought, also, that running at over four hours would have meant a fairly full-text rendition of the play, but its length is more to do with the pacing, which is fairly slow. Indeed, the whole emotional pitch is curiously restrained. The atmosphere is highly charged from the outset, impinged with the sense of distant military conflict, yet always borders on unsettling silence.

Ultimately, everything about this production is determined by, and tuned to balance with, Angela Winkler's performance. Most of her delivery is a sustained and serious address to the audience with a quietness (directed mostly to the stalls) that almost pleads for intimacy and hovers at the edge of audibility. At every moment available, she draws herself as close to the brink of the auditorium as possible as if wanting to step from the ledge the ghost had tempted her to. Her lank dark hair frames a sallow face inwardly puzzling all matter to its bones. She barely inflects her presence or her words, yet nonetheless remains intense. It requires some work from the audience to meet her interpretation, and it will not be to everyone's taste.

One of the consequences of this 'underplaying' of the central role is to give an almost unfamiliar measure of balance to the other characters. Because action in each scene is given its full degree of time to unfold, and rarely steps into overstatement, ilk element of the play tends to win a strange evenness of weight. This 'spreading' of weight begins from the very first on the night watch. The soldiers may be secondary characters, but the careful, steady pacing requires us to identify with their flesh and blood experience first and foremost. In a similar vein, we build an equivalent kind of identification for Otto Sander and Eva Mattes's Claudius and Gertrude, who are both made to count as people rather than mere foils. Even Polonius, in Paulus Manker' s attractive performance, is more human being and father (imperfect) than instrument.

The biggest shifts occur, as I have already suggested, in the most emotionally charged scenes. Angela Winkler's Hamlet is still 'the son' of course, but her sex has two effects I think, one contrary to another, clearest in scenes such as his dramatic rejection of Annett Renneberg's Ophelia and the 'bedroom scene' with his mother, the Queen. On the one hand it annuls much of the Freudian baggage with which these moments have come to be associated, but on the other reinvests their action with a straight cruel force. When he rips Ophelia's handbag from her breast and dashes it to the ground, scattering cosmetics, this is agonising and cruel - as it has to be in dramatic terms - and it even 'symbolically foreshadows' the dignified picture of smutched femininity that Renneberg brings to her later scenes of madness. Yet it also has a curious purity of force, stripped of misogynistic overtones.

Another particular poetic strength of the production is the weight it manages to give to Hamlet's logical morbidity, investing his imagery of death and recycling matter with all its plain stench. Probably the expressive force and directness of the German tongue helps here. Certainly the effectively staged 'gravedigging scene' succeeds in bringing this strand of the play's 'thought' to an entertainingly graphic and ugsome comic climax.

To sum up. This is not an easy interpretation of the play, and is something of a long haul. Angela Winkler's performance could be seen as frustratingly quiet, almost resigned at times. Even when action comes, towards the end, she still does not emphasise it. But the scope of the whole play seems to have been caught, and its background notes, particularly the distant war, given their due place. If it is to your taste, it will repay the effort it takes to meet it in attention. I suspect that this is one which might just have slipped in under the skin raither mair deep than I yet haif ken o. Time will tell.


Magic and Music: The University Festival Lecture. 27 August 2000. Festival Insights series
Venue McEwan Hall
Address Bristo Square
Reviewer Pat Napier

In common with about 98% of the audience, I went to hear Ian Bostridge, singer, give the University Festival Lecture in the McEwan Hall. But I should have been quicker off my mental mark. All the signs were there. I just didn't read them. What we heard was a complex, deep and fascinating lecture given by Dr Ian Bostridge, based on his book Witchcraft and its transformations 1650-1750, which explored a century of key turning points in British culture, politics and beliefs. He himself made that clear, right at the start. Even so, very few people chose to leave.

Ian Bostridge began his lecture with a most elegant compliment to the city, by telling us that he made his decision, right here in Edinburgh, to leave academia and devote himself to music . Then he set his historical scene: witchcraft in the 17th and 18th centuries as a microcosm of the much, much larger subject: the disappearance of religion 1500-1900, alias the unstoppable ascent of Reason and Rationality over the Supernatural and the Magic.

He then rapidly sketched the events leading up to the death of witchcraft and its aftermath before turning to do the same for the Age of Reason/Rationality. He emphasised that the reasons used to justify the end of witchcraft were the arguments of contemporary Rationality and not our present-day reasons.

By apparently irrational means, Dr Bostridge teased out the strand dealing with witchcraft and music to bring up into sharp focus the way that music has become one of the very few approved routs to the Supernatural still operative today. Music's centrality to the meanings and actions of man, its magical and metaphysical characteristics, its musicians' arcane rituals and conductors who wave magic wands were painted. The birth of the multi-talented E T A Hoffman, an almost exact contemporary of Beethoven, coincided with the birth of Classical Music.

By further teasing the strand out to contrast music and the occult in the eras prior to this point, Dr Bostridge used Isaac Newton (whom he called "a Pythagorean magus") to look at the scientific impact of acoustics, tuning, its importance to the instruments of the day and to link Newton back to ancient musical theories. Newton's triumph was to equate mathematical and physical realities into the Age of Reason.

Ian Bostridge then turned to Johann Sebastian Bach's interest in "sounding number" and in using motion to invoke emotion, which was defined as an 18th century view. However "what Newton was as a philosopher, Sebastian was as a musician". Bach was then contrasted with his polar opposite, G F Handel, leading us directly to the 18th century political scene, with the rational force of Whiggery doing all it could to suppress the old Stewart cause. Handel's music in his particularly political time was examined.

E T A Hoffman and Romanticism redressed the imbalance between Rationality and magic and music. We were then led up to the 20th century to look at music's fundamental part in the natural world, its centrality to human life and its power as a hidden persuader. Music's hidden, undercurrent, occult, magical power is one of the very few ways out of man's dis-satisfaction with Rationality and his almost subliminal longing for the supernatural.

Truly, this was a very thought-provoking lecture full of complex theories and detail, ranging across a huge canvas and setting music into its context at the cusp of medieval and modern times.


Making the Visible Audible: Composers and Klee
Venue The Gymnasium
Address Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art, Belford Road, Edinburgh
Reviewer Pat Napier

In the second of her two Festival Insights talks at the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art, Rachel Beckles-Willson turned her title round to re-focus on Paul Klee's influence on two composers of the 20th century: one Hungarian and the other British. Whereas her first lecture dealt with music as the supreme inspiration on Klee's artistic life, this lecture concentrated on his paintings' influence on music. The scene was set by listing the 19th century trend exmplified by Moussorgsky's Pictures at an Exhibition and Ravel's orchestration of the piece.

To illustrate Paul Klee's view that music has a value in itself as an abstract expression deriving from its detachment from the world, and that it can take one "ascending to the yonder", Rachel Beckles-Willson asked the audience to contemplate the impact of looking at Klee's Little Blue Devil while listening to 3 minutes of music. This music introduced us to the first of the two composers.

Sandor Veress (1907-1992) had emigrated to the West from his native Hungary in 1949 and his piece Hommage à Paul Klee in 1951 was his first composition since his appointment Berne Conservatory the year before. He had seen Little Blue Devil hanging on a wall in a private collection and, in Klee's fantasies, had discovered a completely new world. So all the hunour and fantasy Veress saw in the Klee were encapsulated in his suite for two pianos and orchestra.

Then, continuing the exercise in simultaneous visual and auditory contemplation, we were asked to decide which of three more Klee paintings inspired the extract we were hearing: one of his many Colour Harmonies, Marks in Yellow or Collection of Stones. In a mastery exposé of the carefully-chosen music, we learnt that this suite contained examples of Klee's rhythmical, polyphonic and classical musical interests translated into paint and that all of the paintings had inspired various sections.

To link into the second, much more dificult composer, Rachel Beckles-Willson quoted from two of Klee's poems, which re-inforced the supremacy of music for him and then, using a bewitching recording of the golden oriole singing its heart out, led into the difficulties Harrison Birtwistle (1934- ) encountered in setting Klee's painting to music.

For this part of the lecture, Klee's Twittering machine was used. The composition it inspired is Carmen Arcadiae mechanicae perpetuum (1981). Birtwistle's La plage and Triumph of time then illustrated in sound Klee's famous Pedagogical sketchbook which takes a line for a walk. In this way Rachel Beckles-Willson crafted for us the visual properties of the music on the page, deftly linking back to the previous lecture, then explored the nature of abstraction before concluding with her own delight in the beauty of abstract shapes and pointing us to two examples in the Bürgi Exhibition.


Mil Quinientos Metros Sobre el Nivel de Jack
(One Thousand Five Hundred Metres Above the Level of Jack)
Venue Edinburgh Festival Theatre
Address Nicolson St
Reviewer Thelma Good

They rehearsed and developed this play in the writer and director, Federico Leon 's bath room in Argentina where they all come from. And the play has stayed in such a room with a dripping tap and a mother who lays in the bath occasionally joined by one or most or all the other three characters. A lot of water slops out of the bath, accompanied by elliptical lines of dialogue from the four actors, by the end of the play. The mother lives in the bath to be near to Jack her submariner husband. Their depressed son joins her there in his hired wet suit trying to pretend he has visited his father by diving bell.

Through a series of five short scenes the play gives us first one dysfunctional relationship between the Mother and her son Gaston. Then Lisa, Gaston's girlfriend and her son Enco enter the bathroom and the dysfunctional relationships rises as one by one they join the mother in the bath.

Early on the mother says "Mollusc, I married a mollusc." This play resembles a mollusc, it seems just to be four people in a bathroom saying odd, hard to understand things. It takes a grip of you, slides out its soft living tissue, and you and it go travelling as the scenes wax and wane. I liked its spare and slightly confusing dialogue and the pressurised, intensity and strange setting of the bathroom.

26th and 27th.


Monteverdi Vespers of 1610. Festival Insights Talk: Music of the Millenium 1600-1700.
Speaker Svend Brown
Company Edinburgh International Festival
Venue Dunard Library
Address The Hub, Castlehill
Reviewer Pat Napier

The hugely-successful series on Music of the Millenium has chosen axiomatic moments, composers or works to exemplify each century. For the 17th century the Monteverdi Vespers of 1610 was chosen.

Svend Brown, Senior Producer in the BBC Scotland's Music Department, led us on a voyage of discovery, identifying precisely why this great work occupies such an illustrious place and setting its place in cultural, theological and musical history. His deep knowledge brought Monteverdi and his time to life.

In 1610, Monteverdi had become so restless and anxious to escape the Gonzaga Court that he left there without prospect of another job - a situation which was to last until 1613 when he went to Venice. In a bid to find another patron, he had made his first oveture to Paul V in 1606, who had ascended the Papal Throne the year before. The Vespers was his latest attempt to attract Paul V's attention. Sadly it failed, for the pope was unimpressed with it, even though it answered every single stricture of the Council of Trent and complied, to the letter, with every pronouncement.

It is in the music and in Monteverdi's handling of it that the greatest innovations can be seen. To set this scene, Svend Brown played an excerpt from Palestrina's Missa Papae Marcelli composed c.1556, just a few years before the Council of Trent pronouncements in 1563. The contrast in styles was immediately obvious. Palestrina's music was pure plyphony while the Monteverdi set the words at centre stage. In studying the many inventive ways he set these words to music and by listening carefully to the supporting orchestration, one begins to appreciate just how much of a watershed the Vespers is and why it has been chosen to represent this century. Music would never be the same again.

Festive Insights Talks end... 2 September 2000


Monteverdi: Vespers of 1610
Company Taverner Consort, Andrew Parrott, Conductor Venue McEwan Hall, University of Edinburgh
Address Bristo Square
Reviewer Pat Napier

The huge, frescoed, circular McEwan Hall made a surprisingly apposite setting for this late night offering representing the 17th century in the Music of the Millenium Series. Though not a church and not a Renaissance building, its architecture and acoustic lent themselves admirably to the performance of Claudio Monteverdi's Vespers of 1610, more properly known as the Vespro della Beata Vergine, 1610. And although there must have been nearly 900 people there, the building absorbed them very easily.

The Taverner Consort arranged themselves around a handsome chamber organ and were supported by the choir and a small flute duo placed high up on either side of the organ pipes. The principal singers were supported by two imposing theorbos, strings, cornetts, sackbutts, recorders and flutes, and the chamber organ. There followed a surpassing performance. The singers in various combinations gave us everything from pure, spare chant, counter-tenor virtuosity, male and female voices intertwining, to brilliant vocal textures, all supported by equal orchestral virtuosity.

But, in the end, it was the genius of Monteverdi which won the day. Thanks to the talk earlier in the day, I was able to listen for the voices to rise from the bass to the soprano, emphasising the human prayer rising up to God, to appreciate the contrast between the psalms and the concertos, chant and polyphony, colours and textures (both vocal and instrumental). It became fun to track the many different ways Monteverdi found to vary each individual aspect, such as the chant and the Gloria Patri et Filio... which ended each psalm.

As the music moved towards the focal point of the whole service, the Magnificat, the Virgin Mary's own words in praise of God, the spiritual mood began to build from the Hymn Ave maris stella to its most glorious moments, closed by the finest Gloria of them all.

In all, as Svend Brown had said earlier, " a virtuoso piece in every way - singers, players and audience; music of affluence" composed for the very cultured, affluent Court of the Gonzaga of Mantua. It ws innovative music exactly in accord with the new dictates of the Church. But it was destined not to catch the attention of Pope Paul V or to land Monteverdi a much-coveted job in Rome.


NDR Symphony Orchestra
Bruckner Symphony No8 in C minor
Conductor Gunter Wand
Venue Usher Hall 2nd of September 2000
Reviewer Ian Gilmour

Frail conductor wins rapturous applause from final Festival audience

Frail 88-year-old German conductor Gunter Wand had an enthusiastic reception when he was helped to the Usher Hall podium on Saturday night to conduct the North German Radio (NDR) Symphony Orchestra in the final concert of the International Festival. Nearly 90 minutes later, the capacity audience erupted in storms of applause as Wand was called back four times to acknowledge his masterful performance of Bruckner's massive Eighth Symphony.

Two rows of centre stalls were occupied by a cross section of Edinburgh's "Great and Good" -- with Scotland's First Minister Donald Dewar at the centre and former Foreign Secretary Sir Malcolm Rifkind extreme right. Rifkind appeared particularly enthusiastic and virtually led the way to a prolonged standing ovation for the conductor.

There was little sign of frailty as Wand's long, spindly arms alternately coaxed and urged the well-disciplined orchestra through the complexities of Bruckner's work. From the first bars of the opening Allegro moderato, his simple, at times almost languid, beat revealed minute details often missed without lessening the majestic power of its resounding climaxes. His handling of the lengthy central Adagio, with its expressive interwoven themes to-and-froing for 25 minutes, followed exactly the composer's admonition - "solemn, slow, but not sluggish". The final movement, from its sonorous trombone and trumpet opening, string melodies and march tunes, and contrapuntally opposed early themes, rose to a breathtaking climax for what is rightly regarded as Bruckner's greatest symphonic conclusion.

Wand, world renowned as a Bruckner expert and notorious for his strict attention to detail and demanding rehearsal schedule, was well-served by his musicians in what could be the last of many successful Festival concerts.


Scottish National Orchestra with the Edinburgh Festival Chorus
Conductor Carlo Rizzi
Venue Usher Hall, 29th of August 2000
Reviewer John Ritchie

Guiseppe Verdi: Quattro Pezzi Sacri

The four Verdi magnificats which opened the concert, Ave Maria,Stabat Mater,Laudi alta Vergina Maria,and Te Deum.
Succinctly illustrated the special relationship between the SNO and the Festival Chorus,the symbiotic and mellifluous interplay between the Orchestra and the Chorus was wonderful to behold,and was obviously enjoyed by the guest conductor Carlo Rizzi,not to mention the audience. One would almost believe that Verdi,who was a disbeliever most of his life,had written these sacred pieces to say,non omnis moriar, I shall not wholly die.

Gustav Mahler: Das Klagende Lied

This early and rarely performed work by Mahler was described by Alma Schindler soon to become Alma Mahler,on 8th of December 1901 thus..... "At midday he (Mahler) sent me Das Klagende Lied,the text is excellent,the melody a little impoverished but, the structure firm and effective,I can imagine some passages sounding quite passable"

This complex piece in its original form required six soloists,the full chorus and an offstage orchestra as well as the main orchestra.The tenor Jonas Kaufmann was particularly good,as were the other soloists,although I would have prefered the baritone sections to have been performed by the original baritone Neal Davies,who had to withdraw due to an leg injury. However the alto, Oliver Carden performed well, in what must have been a daunting task for one so young.

The offstage orchestra was a pleasant surprise,and gave the piece an almost radio echo quality, which added another dimension to a first class performance,by the the chorus and the main orchestra. The conductor Carlo Rizzi excelled, in his control of all these elements and the performance was greatly appreciated by a capacity audience.

The Singing Story
Venue The Hub
Address Castlehill
Colin Donati Colin Donati

This is part of the series 'Work, Sex and Drink; Scots and their Songs . The late night series gives an airing to some of the material published by James Johnson in his 'Scots Musical Museum'. This is the collection most famous for its massive contribution from Burns who devoted the last years of his life almost entirely to the task of turning up traditional songs for his friend in Edinburgh. So successful was their search together that Johnson's original conception to produce two volumes (covering Scotland, Ireland and England) eventually had to expand to six for Scottish material alone.

Times move on, tradition is aye fluid, and the Johnson is used loosely as a starting point. The series, under the musical direction of Sheena Wellington, devises each recital around a theme generally from working class life in a bygone Scotland. We have nights devoted for instance to pub life, to Jacobitism (of course), coortin, fairy-lore, labour, rebellion and so forth. The notion behind 'The Singing Story' was to pick out a guid hantle o narrative sangs. This meant, in short, items from the ballad tradition.

The Hub is no necessarily the most comfortable setting for music more often associated with the howff, but the singers did a fine job. Adam McNaughtan - grand stalwart of the Folk revival - quipped how it might no be the kitchen exactly, but we were all welcomed in spirit round the table. True to style he gave us rousing and comical story songs, as well as the famously devious tale of Tam Lin.

Karine Polwart, currently with the Battlefield band, sang excellent renditions of the 'tragic' ballads, such as Lord Gregory or the gratuitously cruel Barbara Allen whose rejection of her lover leads to his death. She reflected that it couldn't happen today since the protagonists would just turn up on the Jerry Springer show. She even managed to include a couple with a happy ending.

Mary Smith brought some of the Gaelic tradition, where a sense of connection with the stories is still relatively strong. The music, where the endings of each stanza loop back onto the beginning of the next, adds to their fascination. Bill Taylor provided some instrumental interludes on the harp, including a few seal songs whose melodies pick up on the genuine and haunting cries of these creatures. This seduced us into readiness for a story form storyteller David Campbell giving us something of the true spirit of a ceilidh.

Music of this nature needs an element of informality and two-way play between audience and performer - not something immediately associated with an International Festival event. But, though it was quite hard to conjure the right kind of atmosphere, given the surroundings, some effort to melt these barriers was made and even paid off to some degree, as evidenced by the fact that the audience showed some signs of joining in with the odd chorus or two. It was quite a slow thaw, but came through at the end.

Events in this series run till 1st September.

 

index>>