Music, Carol Main

Julian Lloyd Webber and the Edinburgh Youth Orchestra String Ensemble

Another unlikely Fringe debutante in the shape of cellist Lloyd Webber

14 Aug 2008

Five firsts at the Fringe for Edinburgh Youth Orchestra which breaks fresh ground this year with its new string ensemble of leading players, both past and present. With cellist Julian Lloyd Webber as director and soloist, its Fringe debut also features…

Metropolitan Cathedral Organ Concerts

New organ put through its paces

14 Aug 2008

Fringe statistics tend to be fairly staggering, but if all the organ pipes on the Fringe were added together, their total would beat the lot. The new organ at St Mary’s Metropolitan Cathedral alone has almost 4000. Built in French style by Matthew…

Prokofiev - The Symphonies

Russian around with the tireless Valery Gergiev

14 Aug 2008

PROKOFIEV – THE SYMPHONIES Russian around with the tireless Valery Gergiev In one of the most exciting orchestral weekends hosted by the Usher Hall, the London Symphony Orchestra appears with its principal conductor, Valery Gergiev, performing all of…

The Monteverdi Choir and Orchestre Revolutionnaire Et Romantique

Good grief as Gardiner tackles Brahms

14 Aug 2008

After an absence of almost ten years, authentic performance pioneer John Eliot Gardiner returns to the Edinburgh Festival with his Monteverdi Choir and Orchestre Revolutionnaire et Romantique. Performing Brahms’ Ein Deutsches Requiem and Begräbnisgesang…

Haflidi Hallgrimsson’s Jacob’s Ladder

7 Aug 2008

While the Fringe’s reputation as a hotbed of new talent generally leans towards its hundreds of budding thespians, young musicians make an important contribution too. One such is 16-year-old classical guitarist Sean Shibe, who gives the first…

Messiaen 100

7 Aug 2008

Even over half way through the 100th anniversary year of the birth of Olivier Messiaen – numerous concerts, recordings and broadcasts of his music at every turn – the urge is still to hear more, not less. Regarding himself as much an ornithologist as a…

Song and Civilization

7 Aug 2008

If a singing nun conjures up images of The Sound of Music or Sister Act, then it’s time to get real and listen to the exquisite beauty of Sister Marie Keyrouz. Appearing as part of the EIF’s fascinating Song and Civilization series, the Lebanese-born…

Rose Street Ensemble

31 Jul 2008

What might a melancholy lute piece by the English Renaissance composer John Dowland and a traditional Romanian folk tune have in common? Not a lot, except that both have been used as the basis of later works for string orchestra. In a fascinating…

Scottish Opera: Cinderella

31 Jul 2008

It’s probably safe to say that Scottish Opera is the only name which appears in both the music programme of the International Festival as well as the Fringe. As part of their continuing quest to bring high quality opera to a new audience, the company…

Regal king size - Król Roger

Edinburgh International Festival

22 Jul 2008

Fitting neatly into the EIF’s theme of Artists Without Borders, the majestic Król Roger opens up audiences to an innovative collaboration. Carol Main chats to Festival director Jonathan Mills about the opera’s arrival in the city. Listening to a…

Music at Paxton

17 Jul 2008

Established just a couple of years ago, Music at Paxton hasn’t taken long to realise its ambition of presenting high quality chamber music, whether home-grown or from further afield, within the impressive splendour of Paxton House, just outside…

Cappella Nova - Voices of Scotland

3 Jul 2008

CLASSICAL St Giles’ Cathedral, Edinburgh, Fri 4 Jul A fascinating concert of sung Scottish texts from the 6th to the 16th centuries seems the ideal way to close an international conference on the language and literature of Scotland in mediaeval and…

Scottish Opera: Falstaff

19 Jun 2008

OPERA Festival Theatre, Edinburgh, Sat 21, Thu 26, Sat 28 Jun If you go to only one opera this year, you could do a lot worse than choosing Scottish Opera’s current production, Falstaff. Composed when he was approaching 80, this was Verdi’s last…

Royal Scottish National Orchestra: orchestra+

5 Jun 2008

NEW COLLABORATIONS Royal Concert Hall, Glasgow, Thu 19 Jun The names Elvis Costello and the Royal Scottish National Orchestra aren’t likely contenders for appearing in the same sentence. Neither are the RSNO and Video Games Live. More regular…

Opera Circus: Differences in Demolitions

22 May 2008

OPERA Tron Theatre, Glasgow, Wed 27 & Thu 28 May; Queen’s Hall, Edinburgh, Sat 31 May Think of Bosnia and Herzogovina and the chances are that ethnic cleansing and bloodshed spring to mind. Yet, this Balkan country, where east meets west, has a rich…

Scottish Opera: A Night at the Chinese Opera

22 May 2008

OPERA Theatre Royal, Glasgow, Sat 19 May An afternoon at Scottish Opera was the setting for Judith Weir’s delightful A Night at the Chinese Opera. First performed in 1987 but amazingly only now receiving its premiere north of the border, the opera is…

Scottish Opera: Falstaff

8 May 2008

OPERA Theatre Royal, Glasgow, Tue 13, Thu 15, Sat 17, Wed 21 & Sat 24 May; Festival Theatre, Edinburgh, Wed 18, Sat 21, Thu 26 & Sat 28 Jun Long before any government directives on obesity, Shakespeare’s Sir John Falstaff knew all about the challenges…

A Night at the Chinese Opera

10 Apr 2008

OPERA Theatre Royal, Glasgow, Fri 11 & Sat 19 Apr, Tue 20 & Thu 22 May; Festival Theatre, Edinburgh, Wed 25 & Fri 27 Jun Pick up any newspaper these days and the chances are that a story about China will be making the headlines. Whether it’s the…

Scottish Chamber Orchestra

27 Mar 2008

NEW COMMISSION Queen’s Hall, Edinburgh, Thu 10 Apr; City Halls, Glasgow, Fri 11 Apr It’s not often that a new orchestral commission has its world premiere in Strathpeffer, but that is what happened in the case of Stuart MacRae’s Scottish Chamber…

Mr McFall’s Chamber - Aye: An Affirmation of Martyn Bennett

13 Mar 2008

CLASSICAL Brunton Theatre, Musselburgh, Wed 19 Mar; Eastwood Park Theatre, Giffnock, Thu 27 Mar Whether playing to a packed hall or an empty one, musicians bond through the shared experience of being there and doing it together. When legendary piper…

Scottish Opera - Five:15

28 Feb 2008

Think opera, and it’s usually think big. At 15 hours in total, for instance, the four operas that make up Wagner’s Ring are very definitely tipping the overblown end of the scale. Proving that the genre doesn’t always have to be of such towering…

Scottish Chamber Orchestra - Mozart Symphonies 38–41

28 Feb 2008

CLASSCIAL (Linn Records) There are some partnerships that just work. The SCO’s collaboration with conductor Sir Charles Mackerras is one of them. Not that it doesn’t have to be worked at. Having done so over many years, their partnership has matured…

RNSO – Wagner’s The Ring, an Orchestral Adventure

14 Feb 2008

CLASSICAL Royal Concert Hall, Glasgow, Sat 23 Feb; Festival Theatre, Edinburgh, Sun 24 Feb When, in the early 1980s, conductor Neeme Järvi left his Estonian homeland to work in the west, it didn’t go down too well with the powers that be. His name was…

Scottish Chamber Orchestra

17 Jan 2008

CLASSICAL City Halls, Glasgow Fri 18 Jan; Queen’s Hall, Edinburgh, Sat 19 Jan From the familiar tunes of Vivaldi’s pre-Christmas Four Seasons to four saxophones performing a brand new piece of music is quite a leap. Four is also the number of…

Met Opera at the Cameo

13 Dec 2007

Usually, a visit to a cinema is for film and a trip to an opera house is for, well, opera. Ripping apart the straitjacket of all of that is a relatively new venture that brings live opera direct from stage to the big screen. The stage is the New York…

Scottish Chamber Orchestra with Anthony Marwood

29 Nov 2007

Temperatures are dropping, fires are starting to burn in the grate and teeth are heard in rhythmic chattering. As the seasons change and winter makes its first appearance, that’s the picture painted by Vivaldi in his tribute to this time of year.

Dunedin Consort – Buxtehude Anniversary Concert

15 Nov 2007

ANNIVERSARY Queens Hall, Edinburgh, Sun 18 Nov Composers’ anniversaries can be neat pegs upon which to hang concert programmes, with the added bonus that audiences hear music that otherwise might not get much of an airing. In the case of Dietrich…

Scottish Opera: Seraglio

15 Nov 2007

OPERA Festival Theatre, Edinburgh, Sat 24, Tue 27 & Thu 29 Nov. Seen at Theatre Royal, Glasgow, Sat 27 Oct The term Turkish harem usually brings to mind opulent palaces, sumptuous silks and sensual, oriental soft-furnishings. In Seraglio, however…

The Edinburgh Quartet - album review

Classical

1 Nov 2007

Bringing together composers from very different cultures, Frontiers and Bridges’ thread of commonality is their inspirational teacher, Nigel Osborne. Composition Professor at Edinburgh University, Osborne has guided three authoritative and adventurous…

Hitlist - The best classical & opera

18 Oct 2007

• BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra: Thursday Night Series Not long back in Glasgow from a tour to Prague, the orchestra stays in Czech mood for Dvorak’s richly melodic Symphony No 7. Nationalist sounds from closer to home are heard in Eddie McGuire’s…

Sarah Chang

18 Oct 2007

GUEST PERFORMER Royal Concert Hall, Glasgow, Wed 24 Oct Glasgow’s International Classical series has some impressive names attached to it this season. Alfred Brendel, Kurt Masur, Ian Bostridge and Antonio Pappano are just a few of those who are in…

The Barber of Seville

20 Sep 2007

She’s 31, he’s 62. She’s a young Scot at the start of her operatic career, he’s a singer who seems to have been at the top of his for ever. But in Scottish Opera’s new production of The Barber of Seville, it is not as singers that the two come together.

Hitlist - The best classical & opera

20 Sep 2007

• BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra: Thursday Night Series The opening concert of the BBC SSO’s new series is inspired by heavenly bodies, centred on Holst’s everlastingly vivid portraits of The Planets, one of the most popular pieces of classical music…

Royal Scottish National Orchestra

20 Sep 2007

NEW SEASON Classic Bites, Festival Theatre, Edinburgh, Fri 21 Sep; Royal Concert Hall, Glasgow, Sat 22 Sep; Opening Concert, Festival Theatre, Edinburgh, Fri 28 Sep; Royal Concert Hall, Glasgow, Sat 29 Sep The leaves on the trees are starting to…

Capriccio

23 Aug 2007

At the start of the Festival, opera-goers were spirited back to the genre’s origins with a spectacular production of the first great opera, Monteverdi’s L’Orfeo. Now, as things draw to a close, the opera on offer is one which poses questions to itself…

Ensemble 415

23 Aug 2007

It’s not unheard of for groups of musicians to give themselves identities that have something to do with numbers. The Sixteen, for instance, take their name from the regular quota of their singers. Or there’s New York’s Ensemble 21, whose contemporary…

Royal Scottish National Orchestra

23 Aug 2007

On stage at the start of this year’s Edinburgh Festival and back at the Usher Hall for its penultimate night, the Royal Scottish National Orchestra have three Glasgow dates that are equally unmissable before returning to Edinburgh with their winter…

Monteverdi’s Vespers of 1610

16 Aug 2007

While Monteverdi’s L’Orfeo occupies Festival pole position, there is plenty more on the programme from the great Renaissance-Baroque transitionalist Italian. Five concerts of madrigals make up what EIF director Jonathan Mills calls ‘the sketch book’. As…

St Mary’s Cathedral’s Steinway

16 Aug 2007

It’s not every day that a brand new Steinway arrives on the doorstep. So when St Mary’s Cathedral took proud delivery of their specially ordered grand piano – and its price tag of around the £50,000 mark – it seemed only right and proper that an…

Candide

9 Aug 2007

In setting up this year’s Opening Concert of the Edinburgh International Festival, Jonathan Mills has quickly ditched the tradition of a Sunday evening kick-off (although the St Giles’ Festival Service remains in place for the morning) and has brought…

L’Orfeo

9 Aug 2007

‘Festivals are a sort of personal odyssey,’ says EIF director Jonathan Mills, ‘like a pilgrimage or rite of passage, where you can learn about yourself.’ In programming his first Festival, Mills also threw down a personal gauntlet, meeting the challenge…

Music of Thomas Adès

9 Aug 2007

For some inexplicable reason, the music of the young English composer Thomas Adès doesn’t get much of an airing north of the border. Putting that to rights is the Chamber Orchestra of Europe, with Adès himself conducting his violin concerto and the…

Capriccio

19 Jul 2007

Richard Strauss’ final opera Capriccio, which received its premiere in 1942, is described by the composer as ‘a conversation piece for music’. A young countess cannot choose between two lovers, one a musician, the other a poet.

Simon Bolivar Youth Orchestra of Venezuela

Edinburgh International Festival

19 Jul 2007

Edinburgh International Festival Bittersweet symphonies Carol Main meets Gustavo Dudamel, the young maestro behind the world renowned Simón Bolívar Youth Orchestra, which has transformed the lives of many underprivileged young people in its native…

The Turing Test

19 Jul 2007

Quite what Monteverdi would have thought about a singing computer featuring in an opera is anyone’s guess. Inspired by the famous test set by Alan Turing, founder of modern computer science, composer Julian Wagstaff has written a chamber opera to be…

National Youth Choir of Scotland

3 Jul 2007

CHORAL CONCERTS While the professional outfits take a summer break, it’s the turn of Scotland’s musical youth to take to the stage. First off on the round of summer courses, concerts and tours is the National Youth Choir of Scotland. In preparation…

Scottish Opera: Lucia Di Lammermoor

7 May 2007

OPERA They have been described as wild, cheerless and bleak, but it is the landscape of the Lammermuirs, these low, rolling hills that characterize the area bounded by the Berwickshire coast, that provide the setting for Sir Walter Scott’s gothic…

Scottish Ensemble with Gwilym Simcock

City Halls, Glasgow, Thu 26 Apr; Queen’s Hall, Edi

26 Apr 2007

SEASON FINALE Well known for its innovative programming, the Scottish Ensemble bring their 2006/07 season to a close with a collaboration that straddles the worlds of classical and jazz. Leading young jazz pianist and composer, Gwilym Simcock, joins…

Mr Mcfall’s Chamber

Mr Mcfall’s Chamber: An Everyday Occurrence

27 Mar 2007

NEW OPERA Even though 250 of them are featured in the classical listings in this issue of The List alone, the behind-the-scenes story of what it’s really like being an orchestral musician rarely gets much exposure away from the immediate ranks of…

Rory MacDonald

RORY MACDONALD AND THE ORCHESTRA OF SCOTTISH OPERA

28 Feb 2007

DEBUTANTE Although it is inevitable - and indeed right - that young Scottish musicians don’t always continue their education and develop their careers on home ground, it is nonetheless satisfying when the raw talent that left returns with a highly…

Gianni Schicchi/L’heure espagnole

RSAMD Opera, Theatre Royal, Glasgow, Fri 19 &Sat 2

15 Jan 2007

OPERA DOUBLE BILL USA and Canada, England and Wales, Sweden, Iceland, Singapore and Brazil are all countries that are fielding singers in the RSAMD’s comedy double bill of operas from Italy and France. Although a one-off blip means that Scotland is…

Sally Matthews and Toby Spence

3 Jan 2007

VISITING VOCALISTS As Scotland’s various concert promoters revive themselves in the wake of the festive season, two organisations - totally coincidentally - choose to start the new year with stars from the younger generation of British singers. Tenor…

Eye of Fire

Queen’s Hall, Edinburgh, Wed 6 Dec

21 Nov 2006

NEW MUSIC A bit of chat, maybe some music or the odd amusing anecdote from a celebrated soloist are all staple fare these days for pre-concert talks. Generally free, relaxed and informal, they are useful vehicles for preparing the audience for what…

Scottish Opera: Tamerlano

Theatre Royal, Glasgow, Thu 16 & Sat 18 Nov; Festi

11 Nov 2006

OPERA Although Handel’s Tamerlano is one of the gems of Baroque opera, it is, oddly, very rarely performed. Or perhaps it’s not so odd, given that it is only relatively recently that such operas are gaining in renewed popularity. Conducting Scottish…

Scottish Chamber Orchestra: The Boy Who Kicked Pigs

City Halls, Glasgow, Fri 10 Nov; Queen’s Hall, Edinburgh, Sat 11 Nov

26 Oct 2006

LITERARY ADAPTATION Not normally thought of as a writer, the fourth Doctor Who’s somewhat grotesque short novel The Boy Who Kicked Pigs is the basis of the SCO’s commission from Irish-born composer Brian Irvine. While Tom Baker’s tale is not for the…

Royal Scottish National Orchestra: Naked Classics

Royal Concert Hall, Glasgow, Thu 26 Oct

11 Oct 2006

STANDARDS REVISTED AND REWORKED Naked and orchestras are two words which (probably thankfully) don’t usually appear in the same sentence. The RSNO’s new Naked Classics series is set to change that, albeit the collective body of the orchestra that is…

Felicja Blumental - album review

Polish Fantasy (Brana Records)

2 Oct 2006

If your idea of a Polish fantasy stretches as far as smoked sausage washed down by a glass of vodka, then it’s time to listen to Brana Records’ latest release. Despite the recent influx of Poles to these parts, the classical music of their homeland…

Orchestra of Scottish Opera

Orchestra of Scottish Opera

28 Sep 2006

CLASSICAL They may not be very visible when Scottish Opera is on the main stage, but the Orchestra of Scottish Opera is not one to shy away from appearing in public on their own so that audiences can get a chance to hear and see them a bit more…