Intermezzo

Edinburgh Festival 2011 programme announced

 
The programme for this year's Edinburgh International Festival was unveiled earlier today. Its 'Asian' theme seems to have had little impact on the music side of the programme, and is limited for the most part to vaguely 'oriental' subject matter. The few distinguished Asian guests include Ravi Shankar and Amjad Ali Khan.

This year's staged operas are Die Frau ohne Schatten from Gergiev and the Mariinsky Opera, and Rossini's Semiramide from Vlaamse Opera. In concert are Haydn's Orlando paladino from René Jacobs and the Freiburg Baroque Orchestra and Thaïs from the RSNO and Andrew Davis.

An impressive bunch of recitalists include Bo Skovhus, Angelika Kirchschlager, Simon Keenlyside, Magdalena Kožená, Sophie Koch, Karita Mattila, Diana Damrau and ..... Martha Argerich! She duets with the under-appreciated Nelson Goerner.

The orchestral programming comes courtesy of expensive imports like the Montreal and Philadelphia orchestras as well as native bands,  and seems directed more at getting bums on seats than expanding horizons. The most interesting-looking evening is from Jonathan Nott, Pierre-Laurent Aimard and the Bamberg Symphony Orchestra with Messiaen's Chronochromie, Sept Haïkaï and Bartók's The Miraculous Mandarin (complete ballet).

Anyone needing a refuge from full-on Festival going will appreciate Godfrey Reggio's contemplative Qatsi film trilogy, presented here with a live score from the Philip Glass Ensemble, featuring Philip Glass on keyboards making his Festival debut.

Edinburgh Oztival

There's a 'New World' flavour to the 2010 Edinburgh International Festival programme, announced yesterday. A strong Latin element will spice up the dance programme, there's experimental theatre and twentieth century music from the US, but the principal beneficiary will be festival director Jonathan Mills's own homeland of Australia.

The Festival's centrepiece in fact is a new ozpera. Brett Dean's Bliss is based on Peter Carey's novel and in true aussie style "contains coarse language and adult themes". Sydney Symphony Ozchestra pay a visit, and works by contemporary Australian composers sneakily pepper the concert and recital programmes.

I can't say any of that appeals too much, but the rest of the fest is a distinct improvement on last year's disappointing package (which I am not surprised to learn sold less well than the year before).

Amongst an impressively broad opera programme, Carl Heinrich Graun's Montezuma (libretto by Frederick the Great!) stands out as a must-see rarity, Opéra de Lyon's Porgy and Bess perhaps less so.

Operas in concert are Idomeneo (Kurt Streit, Joyce DiDonato, Rosemary Joshua, Emma Bell with the SCO conducted by Sir Charles Mackerras), La fanciulla del West (Susan Bullock, Marcus Haddock, Juha Uusitalo with the Orchestra of Scottish Opera conducted by Francesco Corti), The Indian Queen (Gillian Keith, Robin Blaze, John Mark Ainsley,  Allan Clayton, Roderick Williams and The Sixteen) and L'heure espagnole (Sophie Koch, Johannes Weisser and the RSNO conducted by Stéphane Denève).

Hidden away in the theatre programme is The Gospel at Colonus, a musical adaptation of Sophocles’s tragedy Oedipus at Colonus featuring The Blind Boys of Alabama and a host of other gospel singers. And there's a super-rare opportunity to see living legend vocal musician Meredith Monk and her Songs of Ascension.

Visiting orchestras, Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra with Mariss Jansons aside, are not hugely inspiring - Russian National Orchestra, Finnish Radio Symphony Orchestra (a Nielsen-heavy programme), Cleveland Orchestra with Welser-Möst and Minnesota Orchestra. I like the sound of Robin Ticciati's programme with the SCO: Rebel, a Kevin Volans world premiere, Poulenc's Concerto for 2 pianos and Bizet's Symphony in C. The closing concert, Mahler 8 from Donald Runnicles and the BBCSSO, looks to be the best of the bunch.

There are recitals from Joyce DiDonato, Susan Graham and Sarah Connolly (singing jazz!), Magdalena Kožená, Christianne Stotijn, Simon Keenlyside, Gerald Finley, Joan Rodgers and Roderick Williams.

And the great Edinburgh favourite, world's greatest musician, etc Jordi Savall returns with his Hespèrion XXI.

Public booking opens on 27 March. The good stuff is, as usual, sprinkled evenly over the festival's three weeks, so the difficulty (for me) will be deciding what to fit in to a brief visit. The consolation is, again as usual, that some of the visitors will be making their way to the Proms. But which ones?

Edinburgh International Festival 2009 : line-up announced

The theme of this year's Edinburgh International Festival is the Enlightenment, although as the festival's director Jonathan Mills explained to The Stage,

“The Enlightenment for me, very personally, is a point of departure only. It is a phrase I am using both metaphorically and quite literally. So I am searching for things that have been enlightening from Scotland and I am recognising the enlightenment as a movement that was able to be created here.”

Whatever. The credit crunch has bitten, and this year's programme is distinctly more conservative than last, with a noticeable lack of big names.

While focussing on the baroque, as the theme suggests, there are also generous nods to this year's Big Four anniversaries, Handel, Haydn, Purcell and Mendelssohn, though sadly no space for Martinu.

Conventional staged operas are thin on the ground. But there's a puppet version of Monteverdi's Il ritorno d'Ulisse in patria, and Handel's Admeto, re di Tessaglia will be tackled samurai style by the director who set Munich's Rigoletto on the Planet of the Apes. Staatsoper Stuttgart bring an intriguing-sounding staging of a selection of Bach cantatas.

Concert performances include Purcell's Fairy Queen, and Handel's Judas Maccabaeus, Rinaldo (from Masaaki Suzuki's Bach Collegium) and Acis and Galatea. The vibrato ban will be lifted for Verdi's Macbeth (Lado Ataneli, Susan Neves, John Relyea and Massimo Giordano) by the BBCSSO and Der Fliegende Holländer (Franz Grundheber, Eva Johansson and Nikolai Schukoff) from Hamburg State Opera. Patricia Bardon heads the cast for the RSNO's performance of Berlioz's Roméo et Juliette.

Joyce DiDonato pops up in the OAE's Haydn programme, and Bryn Terfel visits the Usher Hall with Malcolm Martineau for a programme of British songs. Further recitals come from Willard White, Michael Volle, Christopher Maltman and Bejun Mehta.

The great Jordi Savall appears twice, with his ensembles Hespèrion XXI and Le Concert des Nations. For me, he was the highlight of the 2007 festival - can he do it again?

Full programme details here.

Public booking opens on 4 April, although according to The Scotsman, marketing deals struck by the Festival's organisers mean the best tickets are going to package tourists.

Gabriela Montero - here's one she didn't prepare earlier

Edinburgh Festival: Gabriela Montero - Queens Hall and The Hub, 12 August 2008

Gabriela Montero has been enjoying a fair amount of attention recently for her improvisatory abilities. But the first of her two concerts at the Edinburgh Festival was an opportunity to see how she'd cope with the standard repertoire in a programme mixing Bach, Chopin, Debussy, Schumann and Liszt.

The 11am start was cruel, and she confessed halfway through that she's 'not a morning person'. But the problem lies deeper than that. The pianist is a sort of translator who has to communicate with both the composer and the crowd. Montero has no problems on the second count - she's a warm, engaging person, sensitive and responsive to her audience. But connecting with the score was another matter.

From the first piece to the last, I had no idea what she was trying to say. The first half was delivered in a consistent cautious mezzoforte, the second thunderingly loud. Everything was inflected with a seemingly random rubato. Pedalling was obedient to the rhythm rather than the phrase. If it wasn't for the sheer technical difficulty of much of her programme, I'd have assumed she was playing it through for the first time. 

Her physical abilities were in no doubt, with tremendous strength, control and articulation apparent across all techniques, and surprisingly few fingering errors considering the technical challenges. I did wonder if she'd simply not practised enough or really thought the scores through. Whatever the reason, the results were not impressive.

There are artists whose gimmicky presentation masks a genuine interpretive talent (I'm thinking of the likes of Lang Lang and Fazil Say) but on this basis I'm not convinced Montero is one of them. Significantly, the only time I sensed any musicality was in the encore, an improvisation based on Flower of Scotland.

Her second show was an all-improvisation late nighter at the Hub in front of a packed crowd. Half of us had belted uphill in the rain after the late-running Dudamel concert at the Usher Hall, and wanted something special to compensate for having to skip the encore.

Here, Montero was in her element. Calling out for themes from the audience, she gave us Yesterday in the style of Piazzolla, a boogie woogie Night & Day and the Alle Menschen werden Brüder bit from the end of Beethoven's 9th in the style of Rachmaninov or perhaps Legrand - a fallback style she slipped into for a couple of folk tunes too. Less successful was a Bach-like take on a snatch of the Moonlight Sonata, where she set herself an inescapable circular trap.

It was undemanding and entertaining, and at a technical level, I think the most skilled improvising I've heard.  But I think I'll do without a second helping.

 

This our tempo! Gustavo Dudamel pwns Edinburgh, pwns Proms

Edinburgh Festival: Gothenburg Symphony Orchestra / Dudamel - Usher Hall, 12 August 2008

Prom 37: Gothenburg Symphony Orchestra / Dudamel / Martin Fröst - Royal Albert Hall, 13 August 2008

Edinburgh:
Copland Appalachian Spring
Ravel La Valse
Berlioz Symphonie Fantastique

London:
Ravel La Valse 
Anders Hillborg Clarinet Concerto (Peacock Tales)
Berlioz Symphonie fantastique

What proves that the Dudamel effect is not just the creation of a vampiric media, rejuvenating their tired old classical music coverage with fresh young blood, is that he achieves astonishing results with every orchestra he shakes his stick at.

Here was a case in point. The Gothenburg Symphony Orchestra - professional, refined, elegant - and about as exciting as a secondhand Volvo. But for two nights in a row - and with a long, tiring train ride (and I know, I did it myself) in between - they set an audience alight with their passion and fervour.

In Edinburgh on Tuesday, Appalachian Spring was sprung with the chill vigour of a sleigh ride. La Valse skirled and lurched drunkenly. The Symphonie Fantastique was delivered with the uninhibited inyerface brashness that for once could make you appreciate why it so scandalised and horrified its original audiences. Berlioz would have wept with joy.

I was left with an agonising decision - whether to hang around for an encore, or dash off through the rainy night to my next appointment (a Gabriela Montero late night recital, of which more later). I escaped, and found later I'd missed the two encores the ecstatic audience had demanded.

But luckily there was no such dilemma on Proms night. After the final wild fugue of the Fantastique, and the thunderous applause, the temperature was lowered with the sombre, hymn-like Sangen by by Swedish composer Stenhammar.

And then two minutes later the roof blew off the Albert Hall with a Latin stomp, Tico Tico, that rivalled the Simon Bolivar Orchestra's rendition at last year's Proms. Complete with the never-before-seen spectacle of the middle-aged sensible Swedish brass section tossing their jackets aside and leaping to their feet with their horns in the air.

But there had already been one encore. This came at the end of the first half. Martin Fröst's staggeringly virtuosic reading of Hillborg's (he turned up at the end to take a bow) Clarinet Concerto (complete with masked dance-mime and spooky lighting) was followed by a klezmer-style arrangement that showed off his skills in yet another light. Is he the best clarinettist in the world right now? Probably.

It should be pointed out, for those who care about such things, that I was sitting inches from the front at the Edinburgh concert, the sort of distance where you can hear every violin individually, and there was not a note out of place in the string section.

Sitting just behind the orchestra in the choir stalls at the Prom, I was impressed too by the calibre of the percussion playing. The whole programme was a mighty test of percussion skills, from the fiendish toms in the Hillborg to the massive bells at the end of the Fantastique. Woodwind intonation varied, but you couldn't accuse Dudamel (as some have done)of not knowing his technical stuff.

The Prom is available on the BBC iPlayer, here, for the next seven days. And the Gothenburg Symphony Orchestra have a blog  - in Swedish - with some great photos, here.

Edinburgh:

Gustavo Dudamel and Martin Frost:

 

Martin Frost:

Swedish brass do a twirl:

 

  

Two Widows wallpaper over the cracks

Edinburgh Festival: The Two Widows - Edinburgh Festival Theatre, 11 August 2008

Photo: Murdo MacLeod

It was the title that put me off. Specifically, the Widow bit. It has that sickly whiff of chocolate box and cheese. And Smetana, hmmm. I had to be dragged along, and I certainly wasn't tempted to dig out the music before seeing it. What tempted the Edinburgh Festival to pull it from the rarely-performed box is a mystery - perhaps they were hoping for some easy sponsorship?

The Two Widows is, predictably enough, a frothy comedy, moreover a slimly-plotted one that overlays the worst sort of gender stereotyping (Widow #1's shrivelled and self-denying, Widow #2's a fiery-knickered slapper) with grating whimsy.

And the music - when Smetana said he wanted to forego uncouth Czech nationalism and prove he could do the posh French stuff, he meant it. It's music with the crusts cut off.

Surprisingly, Scottish National Opera managed to concoct an excellent evening's entertainment from these unpromising ingredients.

Liberties have been taken in the cause of livening things up. The English translation is often hilarious but strays some way from the literal. The most effective stage business - a running gag where actors behind a fake frame mirror what's happening on stage - is nothing to do with the plot, even by implication. But the orchestra kept up a cracking pace, characterisations were detailed and thoughtful, and the one-room set with its eyesore 'bohemian' wallpaper and hunting trophies was ingeniously transformed from indoors to outdoors with the help of a few potted plants and the power of auto suggestion.

Kate Valentine sparkled as the man-hungry widow Katrina, and though I didn't buy the last minute transformation to golden-hearted matchmaker, I think this is a problem with the writing rather than her performance.

Jane Irwin made the frosty Anežka sympathetic, with her poignant aria the only moment the opera gets more than a millimetre deep.

The men, Nicholas Folwell's blustering gamekeeper and David Pomeroy's ardent suitor Ladislav, were perfectly adequate but could only trail in their wake.

Francesco Corti seemed to have an iron grip over the orchestra, so I was surprised that they drifted apart from the singers as often as they did, most noticeably with the chorus. Perhaps they were all just dazzled by the wallpaper.

   

  

Dmitri Hvorostovsky paints it black at the Edinburgh Festival

Edinburgh Festival: Dmitri Hvorostovsky / Ivari Ilja  - Usher Hall, 9 August 2008

Tchaikovsky Ochevo?( Why?,Op 6 No 5), Lubov mertvetza (The Love of a Dead Man, Op 34 No 5), yesli b ty mogla (Ah, If only you could for one moment, Op 38 No 4), Na nivy zhjoltye… (On the Golden cornfields, Op 57 No 2)
Pimpinella, Op 38 No 6, Skazi o chem. v teni vetvei (Tell me, what’s in the shade of the branches, Op 57 No 1), Zabyt tak skoro? (to forget so soon?), Sred’ shumnogo bala (In the Midst of the Ball, Op 38 No 3), Serenade O ditja, Op 63 No 6, Don Juan’s Serenade, Op 38 No 1
Nikolai Medtner - Ja perezhil svoi zhelania (Gone are My Heart’s Desires, Op 3 No 2), Mechtatelju (To a Dreamer, Op 32 No 6), Schastlivoe plavanie (Prosperous Voyage, Op 15 No 8), Nochnaja pesn strannika (The Wanderer’s Night Song, Op 6 No 1), Zimnij vecher (Winter’s Evening, Op 13 No 1) 
Rachmaninov - Pora (It is Time, Op 14 No 12),  Ne ver’ moi drug (Believe me not, Friend, Op 14 No 7) , Ja byl u nei (I was with her, Op 14 No 4), My otdokhnjom (Let us rest, Op 26 No 3), Vesennie vody (Spring Waters, Op 14 No 11)

Back to Pat Benatar's wardrobe go the notorious black leather pants Dmitri Hvorostovsky has sported on recent tours. But Mr Showbiz (Siberian branch) is not a man to jade the eyeballs with a penguin suit. Tonight the interval remarks were provoked by a black puffy granny blouse (no! is traditional shirt of Russian people!) tucked it into functional matching trousers.

The sombre wardrobe echoed the programme's Russian gloom. Why has the glorious rose wilted in the spring? asked the first song, Ochevo. Covered by the cold ground I lie began the second. O if you could just for a single moment forget your sadness tried the third - but couldn't.

There's an vein of despair throughout Tchaikovsky's work and these songs which filled the first half get right to its heart. Hvorostovsky was able to tap straight into it, painting his words in many shades of black, but resisting any temptation to wallow or indulge himself in theatrics. 

Enthusiastic applause after every song stemmed the relentless misery (hay Usher Hall, how about replacing the No Photography sign with a No Clapping F***ers? And sling in a Turn Your F***ing Phone Off while you're at it). But rather than resenting this vulgar intrusion, Hvorostovsky seemed happy to bask in the warmth of the audience response with a ready smile.

In the middle of the gloom came a bit of an oddity - Pimpinella - Tchaikovsky's transcription of a cheery folk tune and sung in Italian. Hvorostovsky sang throughout from memory, but here he needed to grab the music from his pianist first for a quick refresher. There wasn't room for any Verdi on the programme tonight, but this bouncy tune provided a reminder of Hvorostovsky's skills in that corner as he relished the long open vowels so scarce amidst the Russian language's gobfuls of consonants.

Tchaikovsky's florid pianistic underpinnings provide more garnish than backbone to his luxuriant melodies. I think that's why his songs lack the intensity of the German lieder repertoire. The pain and heartache of the texts is always battling the gorgeous tunes and the dazzling virtuosity rippling away beneath. Hvorostovsky got the balance right and Ivari Ilja proved the perfect accompanist, coupling technical ease with restraint and taste. I can't think of another pair who have quite such a harmonious professional marriage.

The second half's songs by Rachmaninov and his contemporary Medtner were less familiar, but in the same Russian-romantic idiom. Though even more of a test for teh piano skillz of Mr Ilja, the raw material ultimately lacked the invention and durability of the first half's offerings.

Perhaps that was why Hvorostovsky chose to perk up Medtner's settings of Goethe's Glückliche Fahrt and Wandrers Nachtlied with the infinitely-sustained final notes he's famous for. What top C's are to Juan Diego Flórez, big breaths are to Dmitri Hvorostovsky. It's the length that counts, and we love him for it. Ever attentive to the mood of the audience - he's not one of those singers who retreats into himself - he obliged with a couple more big'uns towards the end. How cheap, how vulgar, how wonderful. Only a singer as technically assured and expressively controlled as Hvorostovsky can get away with this sort of showmanship without diminishing the emotional impact of what's preceded it.

He escaped after just two encores, Rachmaninov's In the Silence of the Night and a passionately camp Neapolitan number.

Dmitri Hvorostovsky repeats this programme with Evgeny Kissin at the Barbican on 16 October - not to be missed.

 

Edinburgh Festival opener Mahagonny fails to rise to the occasion

Edinburgh Festival: The Rise And Fall Of The City Of Mahagonny - Usher Hall, Edinburgh, 8 August 2008

Many operas can withstand a concert performance. Some are even improved by it. But it's hard to appreciate Weill's The Rise And Fall Of The City Of Mahagonny fully without some sort of staging.

Discussions about whether Mahagonny is really an opera tend to revolve around the music, where jazz-inflected songs take the place of classically-constructed arias. But the issue really revolves around the way it was written. Brecht was so much more than a librettist. The detailed stage directions he prepared are not mere garnish, but an essential part of the drama, not replicated in music or text, where foundations are laid and loose ends tied up. When you need to check your programme to follow the action, something's missing. Not that tonight's conductor, HK Gruber, would agree.

He's not a staged opera fan -- "I never could understand what the singers were singing". So he thinks the concert approach benefits the work - in fact his explicit aim, his very own Verfremdungseffekt, is to reproduce the experience of listening to a record at home. In fact it was more like watching a movie with your back to the screen - how much you get out of the experience depends on how many times you've seen it before.

The evening began on a sour note with an interminable pre-concert speech by Festival director Jonathan Mills, rambling defensively about the ongoing building work at the Usher Hall. Enough already! We saw the scaffolding! Get an editor!

And the first act did little to lift the spirits.  American tenor Anthony Dean Griffey - not coincidentally the only singer here with full-stage experience of the opera - made a spirited Jimmy Mahoney. But other performances, though technically competent, spanned that definitively British range from tentative to apologetic. Despite a fabulous, idiomatic translation (by Michael Feingold) there was little to be gripped by.

But after the interval Susan Bickley's brothel keeper Begbick moved from Home Counties to, well, not quite Deep South, but at least East End. Alan Opie, always a performer of subtle gifts, brought a sly wit to bear on his Trinity Moses. Peter Hoare livened things up with what limited acting he could manage in the space between his chair and his music stand. No one except Griffey really managed a rounded characterisation, but at least the action was conveyed. The strife-strewn Edinburgh Festival Chorus sang for their lives (perhaps literally). The orchestra arose from its slumber and began to mirror HK Gruber's effervescent podium style. It was the start of a terrific performance. But it began more than halfway through.

The applause was massive, but was it largely just for the presence of Edinburgh favourite HK Gruber? His enthusiasm was beyond doubt, but the format and the performance itself won't have won the work many new friends.

HK Gruber with Chorus Master Christopher Bell:

Alfred Brendel intrigues but only Soor Plums can satisfy

Alfred Brendel - Usher Hall, Edinburgh, 15 August 2007
and
Concerto Italiano, Greyfriars Kirk, Edinburgh, 15 August 2007
Edinburgh International Festival

Haydn Piano Sonata in C minor, Hob.XVI/20
Beethoven Piano Sonata in A flat, Op.110
Schubert 4 Impromptus, D.935 - No.1 in F minor; No.3 in B flat major
Mozart Piano Sonata in C minor, K.457

Alfred Brendel stuck with the familiar tonight, repeating a programme he's played elsewhere this year, including the Royal Festival Hall a couple of months ago. But, never one to set his interpretations in stone, tonight he re-cast every single piece. If there was any overriding theme, it was slow tempi and big finales.

His Haydn C Minor Sonata moved from a spirited, crisply phrased allegro through a dreamy, meditative slow movement to a brisk and surprisingly light-hearted conclusion. Brendel underlined its prescient romantic flavour with subtle inflexions of pace and dynamics.

The front end of the Beethoven sonata which followed has an austere simplicity that doesn't invite ready engagement. Brendel didn't really catch my attention here until he unleashed the explosive finale.

The first of his two Schubert Impromptus was taken bizarrely slowly, with an even-handed balance that largely obscured its melodic impact. And did he retake some da capos, or was it just the pace that made it seem so long? His second Impromptu was framed more conventionally, apart from some hyperextended rubato towards the end, with a strongly delineated contrast between its variations. His ability to mint a fresh perspective at this stage of his career is inspiring, even if the results were rather mixed.

His closing Mozart sonata had colour and intensity and another almost recklessly bold finale.

The swiftly taken encore, the No.2 A flat major Impromptu from Schubert's D.935 set drew out a more conventional interpretation from Brendel than the earlier pair, marked with a gracefully smooth phrasing.

Brendel appeared rather more sprightly physically than he has been of late, and I gather that, true to form, he's been checking out everyone else's concerts while he's been in Edinburgh.

Earlier in the evening, I hit one of the Monteverdi Madrigals concerts that Concerto Italiano have been performing all this week in Greyfriars Kirk. This music is a joy to perform, but can be rather more effortful to listen to for song after song. However Concerto Italiano's Monteverdi recordings escape the pallid wash of sound more often heard in this repertoire, largely because of the variety of vocal timbres amongst the ensemble. Each part is vibrantly characterised; it's hard to find it dull.

Unfortunately in tonight's performance one of the sopranos was rather too individual. Out of tune and far too loud (I am charitably assuming a cold here), she trampled over the more refined efforts of the rest of the ensemble. Trapped mid-pew, I suffered this ear-rape for almost an hour until they finally wound up. The perfect excuse for hitting Gerry's of Grassmaket to seek consolation in a quarter of Soor Plums and Horehound Rock:

Thomas Ades does le French thang in Edinburgh

Chamber Orchestra of Europe/Thomas Ades/Toby Spence - Usher Hall, Edinburgh, 14 August 2007
Edinburgh International Festival

Tonight's frenchy programme covered 300 years of music from fabuleux to fromage, though in the event it became hard to tell which was which.

The venerable Rameau was the starter. I've always found it hard to muster up the same enthusiasm for Rameau as I have for Couperin, and I couldn't help wondering if Thomas Ades and the COE felt the same. They exhumed the corpse of the overture from Les Indes Galantes but failed to breathe any life into it. It was as English as steamed pudding and just as soggy.

Ades's own Three Studies from Couperin surprisingly failed to pick up the pace, lacking the sparkle and drive of the UK premiere (Ades with the COE again) just four months ago. The scoring is intriguing, but was obscured by an odd dynamic balance, perhaps intentional. Whatever, it failed to dazzle in the way his other work has.

The shift into top gear finally came with Berlioz's Les Nuits d'Été and Toby Spence. Spence began tentatively and selected a different tempo from the orchestra for the opening Villanelle. This was something Ades failed to control, and a problem that re-occured in the final L'Île Inconnue.

However in the second song, Le Spectre de la Rose, both singer and orchestra finally blossomed. Toby Spence has all the basics and more - a fine ringing tone, secure notes, immaculate breath control and terrific projection. When he put it all together, the results were impressive. Although nerves crept in a couple more times, most noticeably at the start of Sur les Lagunes, there were more moments of pure gorgeousness. L'Absence in particular, pickily steered by Ades, was perfect in every way.

The animation that the orchestra gathered for the Berlioz returned after the interval for Ravel's Le Tombeau de Couperin. Ravel's arrangement is characteristically full of colour and detail, every inch of his canvas filled. Although this is at heart a memorial piece, it's also full of grace, wit and optimism, and the COE brought it exuberantly to life.

The closer, Bizet's Symphony in C, continued in this vein. Written when he was just 17, it has all the naive optimism of youth. This adorable froth is derivative, but Bizet pinched so many different ideas (mostly from Gounod) it's never boring. The COE made it crisp and light as a mille-feuille, but never over-sugared, a surprisingly satisfying ending to the evening. It came as a surprise that Ades could pull more out of Bizet (Bizet!) than his own work but sometimes these things just happen, who knows why.

(No photos tonight - I was personally and firmly informed that this means me:)

Mark Padmore walks to Lubeck, pauses in Edinburgh

Mark Padmore, Walking to Lübeck - Queen's Hall, Edinburgh, 14 August 2007
Edinburgh International Festival

For this programme of music by Bach and his contemporaries, Mark Padmore was accompanied by Walking to Lübeck, an ensemble of five strings, organ/harpsichord, oboe and flute, all experienced chamber musicians, but I believe performing together for the first time under this name.

The recital began unpromisingly with Bach's Cantata 55, Ich armer Mensch. Padmore, not properly warmed up, wasn't breathing properly and missed notes at both ends of his range. The ensemble were no more than accurate, locked in joyless precision. The flute was out of kilter with the overall dynamic, domineering and obtrusive, a problem which was unfortunately to persist. They all looked relieved to finish.

Next up was an off-programme extra, Buxtehude's Contrapunctus I and II, added in presumably to flesh out the skimpy one hour originally programmed. Cellist Alison McGillivray explained the fugal structure of these pieces, though not their relationship to the Buxtehude Klaglied scheduled for the second half. This is not well-known music to many people and it would have been helpful to have some programme notes, rather than making us all go through the shiz of post-show googling. However Alison did the best she could in the circumstances and clearly warmed to the applause for her efforts. The ensemble seemed a lot more relaxed here and Padmore had far fewer vocal problems.

Their self-confidence grew further with the recitative and aria from Bach's Cantata 161, Komm du süsse Todesstunde. The flute and oboe sat this one out, and the ensemble sounded a lot more balanced as a result, as they did with the second half opener, Buxtehude's Klaglied. This, like the Contrapuncti heard earlier, was written for Buxtehude's father's funeral. The intensity of Mark Padmore's delivery was utterly heartfelt and almost frightening, his control absolute.

Another unscheduled piece followed, Kuhnau's whimsical Der Streit zwischen David und Goliath, six little pieces of marvellously vivid instrumental programme music arranged for the ensemble and introduced by Padmore. Although intellectually this sat well within the programme (Kuhnau being Bach's predecessor in Leipzig, thx Google) and proved popular with the rest of the audience, its essential lightness jarred with the maker-meeting gravity of Bach's work.

The final Bach Cantata 82, Ich habe genug, showed the transcendent beauty of Mark Padmore's voice at its best. It was literally breathtaking.

The encore, Tune your harps from Handel's Esther, was like a ray of sunshine. Beautifully arranged for pizzicato strings and discreet oboe, it suggested a potentially more fruitful avenue of exploration for this particular ensemble.

It's Jordi Savall day in Edinburgh

Monteverdi's L'Orfeo - Edinburgh Festival Theatre, 13 August 2007
and
Jordi Savall - Queen's Hall, Edinburgh, 13 August 2007
Edinburgh International Festival

One of the reasons I suspect Monteverdi's L'Orfeo has lasted 400 years is its resilience to interpretation. It's musically strong, dramatically simple, and many approaches can work. What Jordi Savall and Gilbert Deflo did with this one was to make it as close to the original 17th century experience as possible. (Fugly Edwardian theatre, surtitles, billion watt spotlights, etc aside of course.)

The small orchestra, Le Concert des Nations, was packed with period instruments. The musicians, in a shallow pit, were dressed in period costume right down to their shoes. Most impressive of all was conductor Jordi Savall himself, tall, grave and bearded. When the orchestra's on display, why not make it part of the show?

The staging itself, intentionally old-fashioned, framed the action in simple flat board sets and a minimum of gesture and movement. The costumes were simple and beautiful, fortuny-pleated gowns in Botticelli shades all round, the carefully selected colours denoting each character.

It was closer to Robert Wilson's spare mannered style more than a typical 'period' production. Especially as it wasn't in slavish thrall to the past - a couple of effective anachronisms were the lavish dry ice that formed the fires of Hades and the silvery mirrored balloon-skin panels that served as opening and closing curtain. You can't really see it in this pic, but the panels rippled and trembled like a pool of water, v.21st C:

The musical side of the performance was more of a mixed bag. Furio Zanasi was a commanding and dignified Orfeo who could have slotted into any production of this opera. Others had problems of intonation, projection and tone here and there. And the period instruments used, by their very nature, render a variety of timbres rather than an immaculate monolithic sound. But although enthusiasm was more to the fore than clipped precision, it was by no means a disaster, and in some ways seemed an appropriate effect for this rather intimate production.

Earlier in the day I saw more Jordi Savall, this time his solo viola da gamba recital at the Queen's Hall.

When Jordi Savall wanted to learn the viola da gamba in the 1960's, it was so obscure he initially had to teach himself. The fact that it's no longer a novelty is largely down to his efforts. In this programme, as much as showcase for the instrument itself as for the performer, he showed just how many different ways the viola da gamba can be played.

A Bach cello Bourée re-arranged for pizzicato viola da gamba by Savall himself displayed the instrument's resonant, guitar-like tone. In Tobias Hume's Musicall Humours he reproduced a drum sound with left hand pizzicato. Needless to say the virtuosity required to pull all this off was staggering.

A range of tunings was used, and the re-tuning between pieces was completed with amazing speed and precision, Savall sometimes needing only a single turn of the peg to get it spot-on (OK, not part of the performance, but anyone who's ever played a string instrument will recognise the achievement here).

The recital ended with a suite of pieces in 'bagpipe' tuning, where the middle two strings are tuned an octave apart and act like bagpipe drones. Savall explained that these pieces had come down to us only in tablature, so it wasn't really clear how they'd been played originally. He'd reconstructed them after studying traditional music from places like Ireland and Norway. Again, a stunning display of virtuosity, and yet another completely different range of sounds pulled from this one seemingly simple instrument.

Afterwards I felt like rushing out to buy a viola da gamba, but instead I ducked out of the rain into Fabhatrix in Grassmarket, birthplace of some loud but functional crafty-style felt hats, perfect for the unpredictable Edinburgh weather, and what's more, made of eco-friendly recycled fabrics.

Vivaldi's Orlando Furioso in Edinburgh

Orlando Furioso (concert performance) - Usher Hall, Edinburgh, 12 August 2007
Edinburgh International Festival

Veronica Cangemi (Angelica) and Jennifer Larmore (Alcina)

This splendid concert performance sparkled like the glitter sprinkled liberally on the singers' cleavages, and, more enigmatically, all over conductor Jean-Christophe Spinosi's coat. Rarely has anything three hundred years old sounded quite so lively.

Spinosi really loves this music, and it shows. Bright and shiny as a tube of smarties, subtlety took something of a back seat as Spinosi cracked his team along at breakneck speed. Rather than being blunt or disrespectful, this seemed to me a sensible response to the muddled libretto and flawed dramaturgy (which I can never quite work out no matter how many synopses I read). He even leapt down from the podium at one point to grab the leader's violin for a couple of bars takeover.

And what a great cast. With the extended vocal gymnastics of Vivaldi's writing, it was inevitable a few notes would go awry, but rather than detracting, it actually added to the tremendous spontaneity.

Sonia Prina's Bertarido from the the Barbican's Rodelinda a couple of years back has remained lodged in my mind, and tonight as Orlando she gave an even more memorable performance, investing even the sparest lengths of secco recitative with passion and drama, and planting every note of her tricksy coloratura warmly and securely. As a very late sub for Marie-Nicole Lemieux in this demanding role, she deserves even more credit.

Veronica Cangemi as Angelica and Jennifer Larmore as Alcina added presence and experience to the mix - both perform on Spinosi's excellent 2005 recording. Philippe Jaroussky's sweet unforced countertenor as Ruggiero was another highlight, as was Christian Senn's effortlessly acrobatic Astolfo. But really, all the soloists were outstanding. And not to forget flautist Alison Mitchell's exquisite solo which concluded the first act.

The performance was recorded, and the programme claims it will be broadcast on Radio 3 on 22 September.

Sonia Prina applauds leader Christopher George with Jean-Christophe Spinosi:

 

Orfeo and more in Edinburgh

Tomorrow I'm off to Edinburgh, where this year's international festival is loosely themed around Monteverdi's L'Orfeo, celebrating its 400th birthday. I'll be hitting the Jordi Savall-produced opera itself and some of Concerto Italiano's Monteverdi Madrigals. Not to mention Jordi Savall's solo viola da gamba recital (if I can get up in time). Savall sidesteps slavish reproduction in favour of spontaneity, so I'm looking forward to these.

Tuesday's soirée française offers a rare tenor rendition of Berlioz's Les nuits d’été from Toby Spence, plus a chance to re-evaluate the Three Studies after Couperin by Thomas Adès premiered earlier this year in London.

Sadly I'm not staying around for long enough to catch the Tiger Lillies Monteverdi tribute concert on 25 August. No news yet on exactly what they're going to do, but armed with their habitual countertenor, musical saw and toy drumkit I'm guessing they won't be drafting in Nikolaus Harnoncourt to conduct.

Colin Davis talks, Janet Baker sings

To the Royal Opera House tonight - not for the obvious, but for one of the ROH's occasional 'In Conversation' events. In this one, Independent critic Edward Seckerson grilled one of my very favourite conductors, Sir Colin Davis. Or rather, basted him tenderly with unction and vaguely turned the heat up for a couple of brief moments. Seckerson's interview approach - mostly, expressing his opinions and then inviting Sir C to agree - was never going to make for many shocks.

But it was sporadically revealing all the same. Beneath the snowy bouffant, Sir C's expressive eyebrows mischievously disclosed what discretion otherwise forbade. Unfortunately, though he teasingly touched on the difficulties of working with star singers, he was smart enough not to expand, nor (heaven forfend), name names.

He did find time though to vent on the subjects of Shostakovich ("circus music") and historically authentic performance ("waste of time", "interesting for about ten minutes", the last resort of "the emotionally bankrupt), neither of which it's hard to disagree with. And he raised a laugh when he revealed how he once snuck an errant D into the famous final C minor chord of the Matthäuspassion - and nobody noticed. (His eyebrows meanwhile hinted that he does far more of this sort of thing than he was about to let on in public - I sense a tale awaiting the telling there.)

The interspersed musical extracts brought home how many truly great recordings he has made - and a surprising number of them relatively recently too.

I haven't been to one of these open interviews before. I'd always thought they must be a waste of time and money, something you could just as easily get on Radio 3, or by googling. But Sir C is a physical communicator not a verbal one, as all conductors must be, and this format produces something beyond mere chat.

I was looking for some Sir C on YouTube, and I came across this utterly magical Nuits d'Été from 1972 - Janet Baker on Danish TV. Sir C is only peripherally involved here - credited as adviser - but it's Berlioz done very much his way, if a tad slower than he might take it.

Here is Le spectre de la rose:

and the other songs in the cycle are here:

Villanelle (this one is a bit scratchy)

Sur les Lagunes

L'Absence

Au Cimetière

L'Ile Inconnue

Can any of the forthcoming handful of Nuits d'Été performances possibly match up to that? I'm going for Violetta Urmana at the Munich Opera Festival on 26 July and Toby Spence at the Edinburgh Festival on 14 August , sadly doing without Anne Sophie von Otter at the Proms on 29 July - but I suspect Janet Baker's crown will remain secure.