Classical music and opera magazine 2014

Grand Greek Drama Mariinsky Opera tackle Berlioz’s Epic Les Troyens Scaling the Heights Paul Lewis on Beethoven’s Piano Sonatas

Festival 2014 Classical Music and Opera Insights

A Perfect Match Philippe Herreweghe on three of his favourite pieces of music Musical Flashpoints Jordi Savall explores a war-torn century through music

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Enjoy outstanding classical music and opera this summer

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3 BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra and Holst’s The Planets

14 A Vehicle for Change – Bernstein’s Kaddish Symphony

4 Mariinsky Opera’s latest version of Berlioz’s Les Troyens

16 Philippe Herreweghe selects some favourite music

6 German chanteuse Ute Lemper 7 Turin Opera bring William Tell to the Festival 8 Royal Concertgebouw’s two night residency

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10 Fit for a Queen – this year’s morning concert series 11 A Musical Warrior 12 Worth the Wait – András Schiff contrasts Classical and contemporary

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17 Paul Lewis reflects on his all Beethoven concert 18 Spotlight on the Czech Philharmonic 20 Flashpoints in Music – Jordi Savall looks at music and conflict 21 I, CULTURE Orchestra drive to put Eastern European cultures on the map 22 Full classical music and opera listings

13 Aldeburgh Music’s Owen Wingrave

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Image Lucas Dawson

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Space Exploration Ken Walton explores the musical solar system on offer in the BBC SSO’s Festival concert

Holst’s The Planets

Saturday 9 August 8.00pm Usher Hall eif.co.uk/theplanets

Image iStock

Supported by

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hen is a planet not a planet? When the International Astronomical Union decides it doesn’t measure up. That’s what happened to Pluto in 2006, when it was declared an astronomical outcast and demoted to a dwarf planet.

So where does that leave Colin Matthews’ musical depiction of the diminutive Pluto, written in 2000 as a glittering complementary tailpiece to Gustav Holst’s existing 1916 suite The Planets?

It’s anyone’s guess what Holst would have made of Matthews’ optional addition, though we know – through Holst’s daughter Imogen – that the common practice of performing only parts of the suite used to irritate the composer. ‘He particularly disliked having to finish with Jupiter, to make a “happy ending”, for, as he himself said, “in the real world the end is not happy at all”’. On that basis, Matthews’ starry tailpiece would seem to fit the bill.

The Holst/Matthews pairing forms the culmination of the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra’s monumental programme conducted

by Donald Runnicles, which also includes Benjamin Britten’s Sinfonia da Requiem and Alban Berg’s beautiful Seven Early Songs. Along with Hamburg-born soprano Michaela Kaune as soloist, be prepared for an experience that is out of this world.

Ken Walton is Classical Music Critic for The Scotsman

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Image Natasha Razina

Grand Greek Drama Kate Molleson looks at the epitome of grand opera, Mariinsky Opera’s latest version of Berlioz’s Les Troyens

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ny full production of Hector Berlioz’s Les Troyens is a major event in itself, such is the staggering scale of the thing. This is grand opera at its very grandest. At around five hours of music it’s almost two full operas tacked together: the first part tells of the fall of Troy and the death of Cassandre, the second of the Trojans in Carthage and the doomed love between Didon and Enée. Berlioz was awe-struck when he read Virgil’s Aeneid as a boy, and that sense of wide-eyed wonder resounds through the grandeur of his self-penned libretto and huge, sumptuous score. Basically, it’s big stuff.

And yet, for all the vast, rousing chorus scenes, this five-act epic also contains some of the most tender and intimate music in any 19th century opera. At its heart is the portrayal of two strong, passionate and ultimately ill-fated women, Cassandre and Didon, who often sing alone and unadorned on stage. It’s through their beautiful, vulnerable, dignified music that Berlioz reveals his greatest compassion.

In a new production coming to Edinburgh from Saint Petersburg’s Mariinsky Theatre, Greek director Yannis Kokkos clinches this key duality between the very epic and very human. He creates a striking, stripped-back stage, anchored in no particular period and reliant on barely any props. It’s the characters, not the trimmings, who make the focal point of this drama. Still, there is no lack of grandeur thanks to the unmitigated bulk of the

Mariinsky company: the chorus makes a colossal sound, the orchestra is gorgeously plush, it’s no-holds-barred from two allRussian casts – expect booming vocal decibels. Valery Gergiev conducts with a grand sweep that carries the evening with unstoppable momentum. ‘It is fate,’ says Kokkos, ‘that is the protagonist in Les Troyens, in the Romantic and ancient sense of that word.’

Kate Molleson is a Music Critic for The Herald and a freelance writer

Les Troyens Thursday 28 – Saturday 30 August 5.00pm Festival Theatre eif.co.uk/troyens Supported by Dunard Fund James and Morag Anderson Sponsored by

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A Fleeting Window of Freedom German chanteuse Ute Lemper explains what draws her to the music of the Weimer Republic

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Image Wolfgang Stahr

Ute Lemper Scottish Chamber Orchestra

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Friday 15 August 7.30pm Usher Hall eif.co.uk/utelemper Sponsored by

oday there is no finer interpreter of the music of the Weimar Republic than the German chanteuse Ute Lemper. She’s been singing the songs of Kurt Weill and his contemporary Hanns Eisler since she was a teenager, and her smokyvoiced, gritty-consonanted, sultrily serrated delivery is unmatchable.

Lemper considers it ‘a mission’ to sing this repertoire. ‘My German identity has been a difficult thing to deal with over the years,’ she says, ‘but honouring these composers – most of whom were Jewish – has been an important dialogue with the history of my country.’

We tend to think of the period as ten golden years between the wars, but ‘interwar’ is a retrospective concept. ‘At the time, nobody knew what was coming,’ says Lemper. ‘It is so tempting to imagine what might have happened had the period lasted.’ It didn’t, of course. In 1934 Weill was exhibited as the Nazi’s foremost ‘degenerate artist’ and soon after he and Eisler went into exile. For Lemper, their songs ‘capture a fleeting window of freedom’. Kate Molleson

Image Pictorial Press Ltd / Alamy

A Tell-ing Tale For Our Time Turin Opera’s concert performance of William Tell highlights the opera’s universal themes

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here’s the famous apple scene, in which our heroic Swiss marksman has to shoot a piece of fruit from atop the head of his very own son. And we all know the overture – at least, we know the galloping bit at the end of it. But what of the rest of William Tell?

Based on a 15th century folk legend via Schiller’s play of 1804, William Tell is an opera about liberty, courage and patriotism. Rossini and his librettists Étienne de Jouy and Hippolyte Bis set their work in medieval Austrian-occupied Switzerland, where Tell is a freedom fighter, the Austrian princess Mathilde falls in love with the son of the Swiss leader, Arnold, and the Austrian governor Gessler is a brutish villain.

Gianandrea Noseda, who brings his Teatro Regio production from Turin to the Usher Hall this Festival, considers William Tell the high point of Rossini’s operatic output. ‘The style is not what we normally associate with Rossini,’ he says, ‘not like the classic opera buffa of La Cenerentola and Barbiere di Siviglia. But by this point in his life’ – Tell was the composer’s 39th opera, premiered in 1829 – ‘Rossini recognised that the operatic era he had been living in was coming to an end.’

Noseda points out that the opera’s themes are especially relevant this year ‘in Scotland and anywhere in the world where self-rule, liberty and justice are important concerns. This is why we should always pay attention to opera. These great works can speak to the hearts and minds of contemporary audiences with the same freshness as they did two hundred years ago. William Tell is the kind of epic tale that we can learn from.’

Kate Molleson

William Tell Tuesday 26 August 6.30pm Usher Hall eif.co.uk/williamtell Supported by The Italian Cultural Institute, Edinburgh

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The Presence of Greatness Amsterdam’s acclaimed Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra returns to the Festival for two unmissable nights

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he Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra’s residency at the 2014 Edinburgh International Festival should offer two nights to remember. It is not only that the distinguished ensemble from Amsterdam often reaches the shortlist – and sometimes the jackpot – for title of ‘world’s greatest

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orchestra’; under the baton of Mariss Jansons, its chief conductor since 2004, its playing has reached levels extraordinary even when the stakes are already so high.

The residency offers two very different programmes. First comes an evening of French and Russian music from the early 20th century, beginning with Shostakovich’s Symphony No.1, a colourful and quirky piece written when the composer was still a student,

his concerto and recital in the 2012 Festival; this time he is the soloist in the distinguished contemporary composer Wolfgang Rihm’s Lichtes Spiel. The programme ends with Ein Heldenleben (A Hero’s Life), one of the greatest of Richard Strauss’s narrative tone poems, marking the 150th anniversary this year of the composer’s birth.

Jessica Duchen is Opera Critic for The Independent

Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra 01 Wednesday 27 August 8.00pm Usher Hall eif.co.uk/concertgebouw1 Sponsored by

Supported by The Embassy of the Kingdom of the Netherlands, London

Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra 02 Thursday 28 August 8.00pm Usher Hall eif.co.uk/concertgebouw2 Supported by The Embassy of the Kingdom of the Netherlands, London

Image Anne Dokter

aged only 19. To follow, the flamboyant personality and swift, light fingers of the French pianist Jean-Yves Thibaudet should be in their element in Ravel’s Piano Concerto in G major; and the programme ends with the same composer’s refulgent ballet score Daphnis et Chloé, which was inspired partly by Russian music, especially the finale of RimskyKorsakov’s Scheherazade.

The following night, the musicians perform music by three German composers. After Brahms’s genial Variations on a Theme by Haydn, the Greek violinist Leonidas Kavakos makes a welcome return to Edinburgh after

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Image Claudine Quinn

Fit for a Queen Broadcaster Donald Macleod explores this year’s eclectic morning recital series at The Queen’s Hall

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ach year, this beautifully-planned series offers up stellar performances, not always by names you may already know. Somehow each year there’s at least one performance which blows you away. A couple of years ago it was the fearless young Russian virtuoso Daniil Trifonov. Probably the most amazing piano recital I’ve ever been to. He returns to end the series this year.

These morning concerts pick up on the Festival’s themes. Ian Bostridge reveals responses to conflict in songs by Kurt Weill and Benjamin Britten; Simon Keenlyside offers glimpses of a vanishing world from George Butterworth who died in the battle of the Somme. Anne Sofie von Otter performs music composed at Terezin. The Pavel Haas Quartet named after the Czech composer also held there plays the first Quartet by Erwin Schulhoff who perished in the Wülzburg concentration camp.

The splendid acoustic is a great place to hear the Festival’s established international stars, but I’ve also been introduced there to the stars of the future. This year the Scottish Ensemble has put together 14 brilliant string players from across the

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Commonwealth. As well as classics by Elgar and Vaughan Williams, they’ll introduce us to a new piece by New Zealand composer Gareth Farr.

Donald Macleod will be broadcasting live concerts from the Edinburgh International Festival for BBC Radio 3

The Queen’s Hall For details of the full Queen’s Hall programme see pages 22-23 eif.co.uk/queenshall The Queen’s Hall Series is supported by Edinburgh Festival Benefactors

Image Dario Acosta

Image Dreamstime

A Musical Warrior Percy Grainger’s The Warrior brings the fight to the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra’s concert

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f you thought Australian composer Percy Grainger’s music was all about ‘English Country Gardens’ and pleasantly bubbling folk tunes, think again. Grainger’s 20-minute ‘music to an imaginary ballet’ The Warriors must count as one of the craziest pieces ever written.

Sir Andrew Davis, Chief Conductor of the Melbourne SO, explains The Warriors origins during the First World War: ‘The piece was originally intended for the Ballets Russes, but Diaghilev turned it down. It has a kind of flamboyant character that is so much part of Grainger’s compositional signature, but it’s not just a war piece. There is considerable music that one might characterise as ‘love scene’ music. It’s actually a piece that has a wide emotional range.’ And a huge, spectacular orchestral ensemble, too – including a ‘gamelan’ of percussion, bells and three pianos (which, Grainger warns, require ‘exceptionally strong, vigorous players’) and even offstage bands.

It shares the Melbourne SO’s Festival programme with Richard Strauss’s Don Juan and

Four Last Songs (from soprano Erin Wall), as well as Schumann’s Cello Concerto, with cellist Truls Mørk as soloist. ‘Don Juan and The Warriors both share a certain exuberance of manner,’ says Davis, ‘whereas the Strauss Four Last Songs and Schumann Concerto are much more reflective and autumnal in style.’

David Kettle is a freelance writer and editor

Melbourne Symphony Orchestra Thursday 21 August 8.00pm Usher Hall eif.co.uk/mso Supported by Harold Mitchell Esq, AC With additional support from His Grace, The Duke of Buccleuch and Queensbury KBE

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Image Nadia F Romanini

Worth the Wait András Schiff contrasts Classical elegance with thrilling 20th century masterpieces

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or a pianist of the outstanding international reputation of András Schiff, it took a long time for him to get round to tackling Beethoven.

Until the age of 50, in fact. Schiff explained that he was waiting until he felt he was ready for the philosophical and emotional demands of the great composer’s music. And when that moment arrived, in 2004, he went for it in a big way, with a cycle of Beethoven’s complete piano sonatas plus a lecture-recital series that has gone down as one of the greatest public projects of musical insight and communication. ‘It’s very hard to talk about this music,’ Schiff nevertheless argued in one of his lectures, ‘because it’s too great to put into words.’

It is two unusual Beethoven sonatas that Schiff brings to his Festival recital – the short but

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emotionally complex Sonata in E minor Op 90, and the intimate A major Sonata Op 101. He complements them with the 1926 Piano Sonata by his compatriot Béla Bartók – a work whose thrillingly percussive music draws heavily on the earthy, rowdy folk music of Hungary and Romania – along with Janácek’s Sonata 1.X.1905, and Schubert’s Sonata in G D894. David Kettle

András Schiff Monday 25 August 8.00pm Usher Hall eif.co.uk/andrasschiff

A Most Candid Self-Portrait Aldeburgh Music revive one of Britten’s most personal works

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Owen Wingrave Friday 15 & Sunday 17 August 7.30pm King’s Theatre eif.co.uk/owenwingrave Supported by Edinburgh International Festival Friends and Patrons

Image Robert Workman

n peace,’ sings the title character of Owen Wingrave, ‘I have found my image.’ Wingrave is Britten’s most explicitly pacifist opera; it’s a timely choice for a year dominated by war commemorations. Britten composed it in the late 1960s as a BBC television opera and conducted the first recording at Snape in 1970. Meanwhile American military planes were flying low over Suffolk’s skies and news bulletins showed images from the Vietnam War. It’s hardly surprising that the opera is infused with Britten’s deep-rooted pacifist values.

Our protagonist grows up in a famous military family but decides not to follow suit and is harshly disowned (‘the very portraits glower at me on the walls,’ he sings). Neil Bartlett, director of Aldeburgh’s new production, describes Owen as one of Britten’s most candid self-portraits: ‘a young man trying to find himself, to reject everything the patriarchy is trying to teach him and to find against all odds an original way of living at peace amongst men’.

With English National Opera’s music director designate Mark Wigglesworth conducting David Matthews’s widely-admired chamber version of the score, this should be a persuasive revival of one of Britten’s bravest and most personal stage works.

Kate Molleson

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Image epa european pressphoto agency b.v. / Alamy

A Vehicle for Change

Bernstein’s ‘Kaddish’ Symphony tackles universal issues

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t’s an open season on Kaddish, all right’.

Rueful words from Leonard Bernstein in a letter to his sister in January 1964.

He was referring specifically to the recent violent deaths of two friends – the assassination two months previously of President John F Kennedy, and the murder in Martinique that same January of composer, lyricist and librettist Marc Blitzstein.

Not that these events were inspirational in the writing of the symphony. How could they have been? The composition of this, his Third Symphony, was completed by the time they occurred. He was, though, able to dedicate it to the memory of Kennedy, but the true inspiration – and the struggle he encountered writing it – came from much deeper within: his concern over the crisis of faith that seemed

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to be dominating a madly destructive 20th century. In Bernstein’s case, that struggle was with his own Jewish beliefs.

As one of his last conducting students, Marin Alsop, explained recently: ‘This symphony is a vehicle – the Kaddish prayer [of mourning] is a vehicle – for Bernstein to explore his lifelong issues of personal faith, the elusive concept of peace and the conflict arising from our great human potential for, and attraction to, destruction.’

Bernstein, himself, wrote the original narration, but was never completely satisfied with it. It was only when he later asked Samuel Pisar, a survivor of the concentration camps at Aushwitz and Dachau, to write and deliver a new one that the power of the words began to match the questioning unrest of Bernstein’s music. Ken Walton

Image Allan Warren

Bernstein’s Kaddish Symphony Sunday 24 August 7.30pm Usher Hall eif.co.uk/kaddish Supported by The Bacher Trust

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Image Jean-Philippe Baltel

A Perfect Match Philippe Herreweghe tells us about three of his favourite pieces of music

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ot only is Philippe Herreweghe one of the world’s most admired early music conductors, he was also offered an enviable opportunity at this year’s Festival. ‘Jonathan Mills asked me to choose the three works that I find the most beautiful’ he explains. ‘I’m 66 now, so I try to play only music that I find truly great.’

The three pieces that Herreweghe chose – Lassus’s Tears of St Peter, Bach’s B minor Mass and Stravinsky’s Symphony of Psalms – stray way beyond the early repertoire for which he’s best known. Stravinsky’s psalm settings Herreweghe considers a 20th-century masterpiece, and he performs it alongside some of Bruckner’s touchingly

prayerful choral motets. But be prepared for something altogether lighter and brighter than the traditional accounts of those pieces. ‘I think Bruckner has been over-Romanticised,’ says Herreweghe. ‘Our Bruckner is quite different from what you hear with big, Romantic choirs.’

Bach’s sublime B minor Mass is one of the cornerstones of Western music, ‘I’ve been conducting it since I was 20,’ he says, ‘but each time, you have to think afresh about the music.’

It’s Lassus’s Tears of St Peter that may be least familiar to Festival audiences. ‘It’s incredibly moving music,’ says Herreweghe, ‘and also meditative in some ways.’ David Kettle

Collegium Vocale Gent

Bach’s Mass in B minor

Tuesday 12 August 5.45pm Greyfriars Kirk eif.co.uk/collegiumvocale

Saturday 16 August 7.30pm Usher Hall eif.co.uk/bachmass

Collegium Vocale Gent Scottish Chamber Orchestra

Supported by The Government of Flanders

Supported by Dunard Fund With additional support from The Government of Flanders

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Wednesday 20 August 7.30pm; Usher Hall eif.co.uk/collegium-sco Supported by The Stevenston Charitable Trust; With additional support from The Government of Flanders

Scaling the Heights Jessica Duchen asks pianist Paul Lewis about his all Beethoven Festival programme

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Paul Lewis Wednesday 13 August 8.00pm Usher Hall eif.co.uk/paullewis Sponsored by

Image Josep Molina

he British pianist Paul Lewis gives a wry smile when asked how he felt on finishing a complete cycle of the 32 Beethoven piano sonatas. ‘There was no sense of completion at all,’ he admits. ‘It’s like climbing a mountain and you think you are reaching the summit – but the higher you climb, the further away it seems to become. I felt that while I knew I’d done it, it was not the end of a journey.’

Lewis is now enjoying other ways of programming some of the most exciting sonatas. For the Festival, he has chosen the E major Sonata Op 109 and Op 111 in C minor, alongside a pair of remarkable works from much earlier in Beethoven’s career.

The two sonatas Op 27 are both subtitled ‘Quasi una fantasia’, but while No.2 in C sharp minor, the ‘Moonlight’, is ubiquitously well known, its sibling sonata in E flat major has somewhat languished in its shadow.

This, Lewis feels, is unfair: ‘It is such a groundbreaking and original work and it is full of character – absolutely wonderful to listen to,’ he says. ‘And in general, one of the many glorious things about Beethoven is that he never repeats himself. He manages to say something new in every piece.’

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Image Simon Fowler

A Touch of Hollywood Nicola Benedetti plays Korngold’s Violin Concerto in the Czech Philharmonic’s first concert

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Czech Philharmonic 01

Czech Philharmonic 02

Friday 22 August 8.00pm Usher Hall eif.co.uk/czech1

Saturday 23 August 8.00pm Usher Hall eif.co.uk/czech2

Supported by Geoff and Mary Ball

Supported by Jim and Isobel Stretton

Image Kiran Ridley

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ast heard at the Edinburgh International Festival accompanied by the sight and sounds of hundreds of fireworks exploding in the summer festival season’s grand finale, the music of child prodigy Erich Korngold is some of the finest written for Hollywood blockbusters. It is to his later composition, however, that the Czech Philharmonic turn and the most noteworthy of his classical concert scores, the Violin Concerto. Soloist for the first of their two Usher Hall concerts with conductor Jiří Bělohlávek is Nicola Benedetti. ‘It’s actually an amalgamation of a lot of his film themes,’ she says, ‘but then obviously a classical composition which he threaded together.’

Written at the end of the Second World War, it was, says Benedetti, ‘a very important time for Korngold as a Jewish composer who had

fled occupied Austria, living and working in America. He was able to start writing again for the concert platform and wanted his work to be re-accepted in Europe. It’s important to remember the intense difficulty and emotional turmoil he was going through.’ Rich, tuneful and luxuriant in its orchestration, one of the many highlights for Benedetti is the violin’s opening melody in the second movement, which she describes as ‘like clouds parting.’

Soloist for the orchestra’s second concert is another Festival favourite, Argentinian mezzo Bernarda Fink. Well suited to her darkly honeyed tone and dramatic, yet moving, power of interpretation are Dvořák’s Biblical Songs.

Carol Main is a freelance writer

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Image David Ignaszewski

Flashpoints in Music A true pioneer, Jordi Savall looks at a war-torn century through music

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t’s a stageful of performers that the pioneering Catalonian viol player and director Jordi Savall brings along for his Usher Hall concert in Festival 2014. But the scale of his performers is only in keeping with the grand ambitions of the project he unveils to Festival audiences. ‘I started to work on the theme of war and peace some years ago,’ Savall explains. ‘The big idea was to cover everything from the invasion of Spain by the Arabs through to the present day. That was impossible, of course, so we fixed a period between the beginning of the17th century and the Peace of Utrecht in 1714.’

Savall’s project illustrates the multifarious flashpoints using music that has intimate connections with them. ‘It’s a very eclectic, rich choice of pieces, going from Russian music to English, Ottoman, German, Italian – but this describes exactly what was happening in those times.’ The music that Savall has chosen ranges

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from Ottoman marches to Jewish laments, from a viol work by John Jenkins connected with the English Civil War to a celebratory Handel anthem marking the Peace of Utrecht. ‘It shows the different ways to celebrate – both the victories, and also the peace that comes after war – in beautiful music that’s different every time.’ David Kettle

Hespèrion XXI Le Concert des Nations La Capella Reial de Catalunya Tuesday 12 August 7.30pm Usher Hall eif.co.uk/hesperion Supported by David McLellan

Eastern Riches I, CULTURE Orchestra foster cultural exhange through music

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CULTURE is very much a new kid on the orchestral block. Founded in 2011, it might be short on length of service, but it more than makes up for that with enthusiasm, power and sheer opulence of sound.

The orchestra brings together fine young musicians from seven countries from the Eastern Partnership – Ukraine, Belarus, Moldova, Georgia, Armenia, Azerbaijan and Poland. ‘The most important things we’re trying to do are to encourage cultural exchange between those countries,’ says I, CULTURE’s charismatic young conductor Kirill Karabits, ‘and also to show the world the wonderful, unique cultures of those nations.’

It’s music by two more familiar composers that they bring to Festival 2014.

Shostakovich’s powerful Symphony No 7, the ‘Leningrad’, was famously completed during the harrowing 900-day Nazi siege of the Soviet city – well, maybe. ‘We’ve discovered that

Shostakovich actually began writing it before the war even started. This music is about a wider struggle for freedom.’

It shares the programme with the moving Sinfonia elegiaca by the lesser-known Polish composer Andrzej Panufnik. ‘It’s an anti-war protest against violence and the aggressive element in mankind,’ explains Karabits. ‘Both symphonies have their own stories, but what unites them is the emphasis on humanity, and the freedom of people and countries.’

David Kettle

Shostakovich’s Leningrad Symphony Sunday 17 August 7.30pm Usher Hall eif.co.uk/leningrad

Image Konrad Ćwik / Adam Mickiewicz Institute

Supported by

Léan Scully EIF Fund James and Morag Anderson

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Listings Please note, a transaction fee of £1 will be added to all bookings. If you choose to receive your tickets by post, you will be charged an additional 80p for postage.

Fri 8 August  The Opening Concert Royal Scottish National Orchestra Festival 2014 opens with three opulent masterpieces

by Schoenberg, Scriabin and Debussy.

Usher Hall 7.30pm £12–£46 eif.co.uk/opening

Sat 9 August  Hebrides Ensemble Features Stravinsky’s The Soldier’s Tale narrated by actor Graham F. Valentine The Queen’s Hall 11.00am £8.50–£30 eif.co.uk/hebrides  Holst’s The Planets BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra One of the grandest orchestral showpieces in classical music.

Usher Hall 8.00pm £12–£44 eif.co.uk/theplanets

Sun 10 August  Scottish Chamber Orchestra The Orchestra are joined by pianist Lars Vogt in a programme of Brahms, Schumann, Webern and Beethoven.

Usher Hall 7.30pm £12–£44 eif.co.uk/sco

Mon 11 August  Nicola Benedetti and friends Recital contrasting Brahms’s Piano Quartet in G minor and Shostakovich’s Piano Quintet.

The Queen’s Hall 11.00am £8.50–£30 eif.co.uk/benedetti  Quartet for the End of Time A quartet of exceptional soloists perform Messiaen’s landmark composition.

Greyfriars Kirk 5.45pm £20 eif.co.uk/endoftime  The Sixteen Eclectic programme featuring music from the Renaissance to the present day.

Usher Hall 8.00pm £12–£44 eif.co.uk/thesixteen

Tue 12 August  Ian Bostridge & Julius Drake Songs by Mahler, Weill and Britten.

The Queen’s Hall 11.00am £8.50–£30 eif.co.uk/bostridge-drake  Collegium Vocale Gent Grief, regret and forgiveness explored in Lassus’s Lagrime di San Pietro Greyfriars Kirk 5.45pm £20 eif.co.uk/collegiumvocale  Hespèrion XXI Le Concert des Nations La Capella Reial de Catalunya Three exceptional instrumental and choral ensembles explore war and peace through music.

Usher Hall 7.30pm £10–£34 eif.co.uk/hesperion

Wed 13 August  Alban Gerhardt & Steven Osborne Solo and duo works

by Britten, Tippett and Beethoven.

The Queen’s Hall 11.00am £8.50–£30 eif.co.uk/gerhardt-osborne

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 Sister Marie Keyrouz & L’Ensemble De La Paix Canticles of the Eastern Christian Church Greyfriars Kirk 5.45pm £20 eif.co.uk/keyrouz  Paul Lewis One of the finest British pianists in an all Beethoven concert.

Usher Hall 8.00pm £10–£34 eif.co.uk/paullewis

Thu 14 August  Artemis Quartet Programme featuring Mozart and Bartók concluding with Schubert’s masterful ‘Death and the Maiden’ Quartet.

The Queen’s Hall 11.00am £8.50–£30 eif.co.uk/artemis  The Hilliard Ensemble The Ensemble performs Heider’s Six Songs for Peace and Dufay’s Missa L’homme armé.

Greyfriars Kirk 5.45pm £20 eif.co.uk/hilliard  Britten’s War Requiem Philharmonia Orchestra Sir Andrew Davis conducts the Orchestra and a worldclass line-up of soloists for Britten’s powerful masterpiece.

Usher Hall 8.00pm £12–£44

Fri 15 August  Piotr Anderszewski The Polish virtuoso plays Bach, Schumann, Szymanowski and Schubert.

The Queen’s Hall 11.00am £8.50–£30 eif.co.uk/anderszewski  Wu Man, Sanubar Tursun & Friends Two revered virtuosos in Asian traditions come together to explore musical encounters on central Asian frontiers.

Greyfriars Kirk 5.45pm £20 eif.co.uk/wuman  Ute Lemper & Scottish Chamber Orchestra Charismatic German chanteuse sings songs by Weill, Eisler and Stravinsky Usher Hall 7.30pm £12–£44 eif.co.uk/utelemper  Owen Wingrave Aldeburgh Music A young man fights to escape his family’s militarism in Britten’s powerful opera King’s Theatre 7.30pm £15–£35 eif.co.uk/owenwingrave

Sat 16 August  Trio Verlaine Programme including Debussy’s highly evocative Sonata for flute, viola and harp.

The Queen’s Hall 11.00am £8.50–£30 eif.co.uk/trioverlaine  Arditti Quartet Music by Dowland, Gesualdo, Brian Ferneyhough and Hilda Paredes.

Greyfriars Kirk 5.45pm £20 eif.co.uk/arditti  Bach’s Mass in B minor Collegium Vocale Gent Choir and Orchestra The Choir and Orchestra tackle Bach’s crowning achievement Usher Hall 7.30pm £12–£44 eif.co.uk/bachmass

Sun 17 August  Owen Wingrave Aldeburgh Music A young man fights to escape his family’s militarism in Britten’s powerful opera King’s Theatre 7.30pm £15–£35 eif.co.uk/owenwingrave  Shostakovich’s Leningrad Symphony I, CULTURE Orchestra Exceptional young musicians from the former Soviet Union and Eastern Bloc perform two powerful symphonies.

Usher Hall 7.30pm £12–£44 eif.co.uk/leningrad

Mon 18 August  Anna Prohaska & Eric Schneider Including songs by Beethoven, Braunfels, Wolf, Schubert and Stravinsky The Queen’s Hall 11.00am £8.50–£30 eif.co.uk/prohaska-schneider  Polish Radio Choir Music by Górecki and Penderecki Greyfriars Kirk 5.45pm £20 eif.co.uk/polishradio  London Philharmonic Orchestra Beethoven’s ‘Eroica’, Bartók’s Violin Concerto No 2 and Magnus Lindberg’s Chorale Usher Hall 8.00pm £12–£44 eif.co.uk/lpo

Tue 19 August

Fri 22 August

Thu 26 August

Fri 29 August

 Michael Houstoun Music by Vaughan Williams, Ravel, Lilburn and Rachmaninov The Queen’s Hall 11.00am £8.50–£30 eif.co.uk/houstoun

 Takács Quartet The Quartet play Janáček, Smetana and Beethoven The Queen’s Hall 11.00am £8.50–£30 eif.co.uk/takacs01

 Scottish Ensemble & Commonwealth Strings A vibrant celebration of the rich and diverse music of the Commonwealth.

The Queen’s Hall 11.00am £8.50–£30 eif.co.uk/scottishensemble

 Frank Peter Zimmermann & Christian Zacharias All Beethoven programme from the internationally sought-after violinist.

The Queen’s Hall 11.00am £8.50–£30 eif.co.uk/zimmermannzacharias

 The Tallis Scholars Programme contrasting the splendours of Renaissance choral music from Italy, France and the Netherlands.

Greyfriars Kirk 5.45pm £20 eif.co.uk/tallisscholars  Kronos Quartet The world-renowned Quartet perform music by Philip Glass and Clint Mansell Usher Hall 8.00pm £10–£34 eif.co.uk/kronos

Wed 20 August

 Czech Philharmonic 01 Nicola Benedetti joins the Orchestra and conductor Jiří Bělohlávek in an evening of Janáček, Korngold and Martinů.

Usher Hall 8.00pm £12–£44 eif.co.uk/czech1

Sat 23 August  Takács Quartet The Quartet play Janáček, Barber and Beethoven The Queen’s Hall 11.00am £8.50–£30 eif.co.uk/takacs02

 Simon Keenlyside & Malcolm Martineau Includes songs and chansons

by Ireland, Somervell, Eisler, Gurney and Wolf.

The Queen’s Hall 11.00am £8.50–£30 eif.co.uk/keenlyside-martineau

 Czech Philharmonic 02 Smetana’s From My Life, Dvořák’s Biblical Songs and Janáček’s Sinfonietta Usher Hall 8.00pm £12–£44 eif.co.uk/czech2

 Ricercar Consort Music Scheidt, Schütz and Schein.

Greyfriars Kirk 5.45pm £20 eif.co.uk/ricercar

Sun 24 August

 Collegium Vocale Gent & Scottish Chamber Orchestra An evening of Bruckner, Haydn and Stravinsky.

Usher Hall 7.30pm £12–£44 eif.co.uk/collegium-sco

Thu 21 August  Renaud Capuçon and friends Exceptional chamber musicians join Capuçon for Korngold, Mahler and Webern.

The Queen’s Hall 11.00am £8.50–£30 eif.co.uk/capucon  Concerto Italiano One of Italy’s finest Baroque ensembles plays music by Monteverdi, Marini, Uccellini, Merula and Castello.

Greyfriars Kirk 5.45pm £20 eif.co.uk/concertoitaliano  Melbourne Symphony Orchestra Soprano Erin Wall and cellist Truls Mørk join conductor Sir Andrew Davis for Strauss, Schumann and Grainger.

Usher Hall 8.00pm £12–£44 eif.co.uk/mso

 Bernstein’s Kaddish Symphony Royal Scottish National Orchestra Soprano Rebecca Evans, the Edinburgh Festival Chorus, NYCoS National Girls Choir join conductor John Axelrod and narrator Samuel Pisar.

Usher Hall 7.30pm £12–£44 eif.co.uk/kaddish

Mon 25 August  Anne Sofie von Otter and friends Songs and instrumental music from Terezín.

The Queen’s Hall 11.00am £8.50–£30 eif.co.uk/vonotter András Schiff The virtuoso pianist plays Beethoven, Bartók, Janáček and Schubert.

Usher Hall 8.00pm £10–£34 eif.co.uk/andrasschiff

 William Tell Teatro Regio Torino Rossini’s passionate tale of forbidden love and a bitter struggle against tyranny.

Usher Hall 6.30pm £12–£44 eif.co.uk/williamtell

Wed 27 August  Stéphane Degout & Simon Lepper Songs and Lieder by Schubert, Loewe, Schumann, Liszt, Weill, Wolf and Fauré.

The Queen’s Hall 11.00am £8.50–£30 eif.co.uk/degout-lepper  Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra 01 Pianist Jean-Yves Thibaudet joins conductor Mariss Jansons and the Orchestra for an evening of Shostakovich and Ravel.

Usher Hall 8.00pm £12–£44 eif.co.uk/concertgebouw1

Thu 28 August  Pavel Haas Quartet Programme includes Schulhoff, Shostakovich and Brahms.

The Queen’s Hall 11.00am £8.50–£30 eif.co.uk/pavelhaas  Les Troyens Mariinsky Opera Berlioz’s epic operatic tale of love and war, obedience and loyalty, fate and freedom.

Festival Theatre 5.00pm £20–£95 eif.co.uk/troyens  Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra 02 Leonidas Kavakos joins the Orchestra for Wolfgang Rihm’s Lichtes Spiel, alongside Brahms and Strauss.

Usher Hall 8.00pm £12–£44 eif.co.uk/concertgebouw2

 Les Troyens Mariinsky Opera Berlioz’s epic operatic tale of love and war, obedience and loyalty, fate and freedom.

Festival Theatre 5.00pm £20–£95 eif.co.uk/troyens  Mahler’s Symphony No 6 Rotterdam Philharmonic Orchestra Yannick Nézet-Séguin leads the Orchestra for one of Mahler’s most powerful and poignant works.

Usher Hall 8.00pm £12–£44 eif.co.uk/mahler6

Sat 30 August  Daniil Trifonov The breathtaking young virtuoso plays Stravinsky, Ravel and Liszt.

The Queen’s Hall 11.00am £8.50–£30 eif.co.uk/trifonov  Les Troyens Mariinsky Opera Berlioz’s epic operatic tale of love and war, obedience and loyalty, fate and freedom.

Festival Theatre 5.00pm £20–£95 eif.co.uk/troyens  BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra Ilan Volkov conducts a stellar line-up of soloists and the Edinburgh Festival Chorus in a spectacular finale to the Festival concert series.

Usher Hall 8.00pm £12–£44 eif.co.uk/bbcsso

Sun 31 August  Virgin Money Fireworks Concert Scottish Chamber Orchestra The Festival comes to a spectacular finale with inspirational music and breathtaking fireworks against the backdrop of Edinburgh’s iconic castle Princes Street Gardens 9.00pm £12.50 £17.50 £28.50 eif.co.uk/virginmoneyfireworks

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Fiery Festival Finale!

Festival 2014 concludes with a spectacular concert, with fireworks launched from Edinburgh’s iconic Castle to music

by Wagner, Beethoven, Debussy and Mendelssohn, concluding with Tchaikovsky’s electrifying 1812 Overture performed live by the Scottish Chamber Orchestra.

Virgin Money Fireworks Concert Sunday 31 August 9.00pm eif.co.uk/virginmoneyfireworks Sponsored by

Book your Festival 2014 tickets now and enjoy unmissable world-class music and opera this summer!

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