The Edinburgh International Festival (EIF) has already entranced us with My Light Shines On at the beginning of the month.
Now it is the turn of the Edinburgh venues which would have been full of music, performance and audiences to feature the sights and sounds of recorded performances to keep festival fans entertained. These are available on YouTube and on BBC Radio 3 (more details below).
At The Queen’s Hall, which is beloved of so many locals as well as international visitors, EIF recorded a performance for you to enjoy at home on YouTube. So sit back and do just that.
This was recorded observing strict physical distancing and features Lawrence Power and Esa-Pekka Salonen – Lockdown Commissions.
Lawrence Power is one of the UK’s foremost violists, a champion of contemporary composition who performs regularly at the Edinburgh International Festival and across the UK. In response to the exceptional circumstances of the Covid-19 pandemic, he has commissioned ten composers representing a broad spectrum of classical music to create short pieces for unaccompanied viola. He performs each piece for film at recognised venues around the country, which for now must remain closed, in a powerful exploration of the relationship between their silence and the pieces written for him.
From The Queen’s Hall in Edinburgh, Power performs a piece composed for him by legendary pioneer Esa-Pekka Salonen. As Artistic Advisor and Principal Conductor at London’s Philharmonia Orchestra and Conductor Laureate of the Los Angeles Philharmonic, Salonen has explored the relationship between music and digital technology for the modern age. His latest work objets trouvés for solo viola and drone demonstrates the resilience of creativity in a unique moment of history.
BBC Radio 3 on BBC Radio Sounds allows you to listen to 15 concerts in the Queen’s Hall Series These are performances recorded at The Queen’s Hall in previous years when they feature daytime concerts.
Broadcast from 10-28 August 2020, tune in to hear the following performances:
Monday 10 August: From 2009, pianist Elisabeth Leonskaja recreated one of Chopin’s last ever concerts played in a house on Edinburgh’s Queen street in 1848
Tuesday 11 August: Colin Currie & friends joined forces in 2015 for a programme of exhilarating music for two pianists and two percussionists, including works from Bartók and Steve Reich
Wednesday 12 August: Mezzo soprano Sarah Connolly’s recital of opulent songs by Strauss and Debussy from 2015, accompanied by Malcolm Martineau
Thursday 13 August: In a recital from 2018, Nicola Benedetti, accompanied by the world-renowned Academy of Ancient Music and Richard Egarr, showcased a performance of witty and theatrical Baroque works featuring Vivaldi Concerti
Friday 14 August: German singer Andreas Scholl joined pianist Tamar Halperin to deliver a wide-ranging programme of Classical and Romantic song in 2013, from the drama of Schubert’s Death and the Maiden to delightful folk-song settings by Brahms
Monday 17 August: An intimate piano recital from Mikhail Pletnev in 2017 featured an all-Rachmaninov programme including the rarely performed First Piano Sonata
Tuesday 18 August: In 2014, mezzo soprano Anne Sofie von Otter assembled a collection of songs and instrumental music produced or played in Terezín during the Nazi reign of terror. This recital saw her perform them with an ensemble of exceptional colleagues
Wednesday 19 August: Trio Zimmermann performed work by Mozart, Schoenberg and Schubert in their ravishing performance from 2012
Thursday 20 August: Jean-Guihen Queyras, in partnership with Alexandre Tharaud, performed repertoire for piano and cello from Marin Marais and Kodály from their concert in 2011
Friday 21 August: Baritone Florian Boesch brought his provocative account of Schubert’s Die schöne Müllerin to the Queen’s Hall in 2016 alongside regular collaborator, eminent Lieder pianist Malcolm Martineau
Monday 24 August: Chiaroscuro Quartet contrasted works by Bach, Haydn and Schubert in their concert from 2017
Tuesday 25 August: From 2018, exciting historical keyboard player Ronald Brautigam performed Mendelssohn and Chopin as it would have sounded in the 19th century
Wednesday 26 August: Les Vents Français celebrated French wind music at its elegant, witty best with a recital from 2012 featuring work from Ravel and Taffanel
Thursday 27 August: A performance from Dunedin Consort and Louise Alder in 2016 filled with works from Handel, including his dramatic cantata Il delirio amoroso
Friday 28 August: Christian Tetzlaff and Leif Ove Andsnes presented a wide-ranging recital of Violin Sonatas by Janáček, Mozart and Shostakovich in 2017
More information on The Edinburgh International Festival website
Founding Editor of The Edinburgh Reporter.
Edinburgh-born multimedia journalist and iPhoneographer.
