Safety first policy carries risk for Edinburgh Festival £1.90

ICOULD never muster much

enthusiasm for the title of the

Thundering Hooves report of 2006,

which metaphorically sought to

represent the threat of other festivals catching up with Edinburgh and usurping its role as the UK’s major arts event. Both a bit macho and slightly camp (never mutually exclusive categories), there was also a defensive and insular lets-put-the-wagons-in-acircle suggestion in there as well. But it was undoubtedly effective in focusing attention, particularly through the creation of the Scottish Government’s Expo Fund as a separate funding stream for the creation of new work.

There may be questions about the political accountability and targeting of that money, which has now extended its reach beyond the Festival City, but it has assuredly underwritten projects that would probably not have happened otherwise.

It was the biennial Manchester International Festival, which began in

2007 and was directed by a former Edinburgh hand, Alex Poots, that was the catalyst for the anxiety in the capital, and particularly its founding policy of presenting only first performances of new work.

Originating new productions is the most expensive and precarious part of any festival, but it is the yardstick by which they are usually measured. New works, or new approaches to classic works, are what bring critics to events, as well as making a festival a destination for cultural tourism.

Manchester’s experience illustrates the danger of adopting such an exclusive policy. For example, Damon Albarn of Blur may be a more inventive musician than either of the Gallagher brothers in his one-time rivals Oasis, but his Manchester-born musical theatre extravaganzas have not exactly found a place in repertory or on the international festival circuit.

This year’s Edinburgh International Festival, however, stands at the other extreme, which is perhaps why there have been so few critics from outside of Scotland, even if there seems to be have been no shortage of cultural tourists in the city. Very little in this year’s EIF programme is new and the vast bulk of it is tried and tested and has been seen elsewhere.

In the dance programme, Akram Khan’s Xenos and Wayne McGregor’s Autobiography were both seen in London before coming to Edinburgh, and the works by international visitors LEV Dance and Kiss & Cry Collective were performed in Europe last year. All three staged operas at the Festival and King’s theatres this year were acclaimed productions that had already toured internationally. One was from Paris’s Bouffes du Nord, which is in residence in Edinburgh this year, but – almost by definition – is presenting work that at least Paris has already seen.

Even on the concert stage, where an overlap with the programmes touring orchestras are presenting at the BBC Proms is London is usually the only matter of concern, there have been many repeat performances this year.

The Scottish Chamber Orchestra had played all of the Brahms Symphonies in its season concerts before recording them, and the Bernstein concerts the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra and Marin Alsop are playing this weekend were heard earlier this year, with Scots violinist Nicola Benedetti, on their home turf. The latest instalment of Wagner’s Ring, Siegfried, saw the Halle and Sir Mark Elder repeat a concert they had given in Manchester in their own cycle, and Edinburgh’s own Dunedin Consort first performed John Butt’s version of Handel’s Samson at the Easter early music festival in Krakow of which he was guest artistic director this year.

If the concerts and productions are of the high standard of all of the above, does it matter that Edinburgh is seeing fewer premieres, with all the risk that entails? Perhaps the realistic answer is that a sensible balance has to be struck, but it is undeniable that this year’s EIF programme perhaps erred too far on the safe side.

FASHION