Ken Walton’s classical music highlights
By insisting on “accessibility” and “community”, Nicola Benedetti has set herself a formidable challenge, aspiring to a festival that can be all things to all yet remain faithful to its uncompromising artistic creed. This classical music programme – imaginative, innovative and resourceful, despite hard times – edges closer to that ideal.
Consider opera, beefed up with fully-staged productions of Bizet’s Carmen (Opéra-comique) and Mozart’s The Marriage of Figaro (Komische Oper Berlin), but countered by a quirky promenade production, with mass community chorus, of Stravinsky’s Oedipus Rex at The National Museum of Scotland by Scottish Opera, similar to its walkabout Candide in Glasgow two years ago.
Operas-in-concert promise a mischievous version of Mozart’s Così fan tutte led by Maxim Emelyanychev and the Scottish Chamber Orchestra, and Strauss’s gorgeous Capriccio as the festival finale under Sir Andrew Davis, with Swedish soprano Malin Byström, unforgettable from her 2022 Salome, as Countess.
The Usher Hall expands on last year’s extravagant spiritual curtainraiser with two starkly contrasting back-to-back treatments of the Passion story: Osvaldo Golijov’s Latin American-infused La Pasión según San Marcos, followed a day later by Mendelssohn’s 1841 arrangement of Bach’s St Matthew Passion.
In three ensemble residencies, standard symphonic fare vies with innovation. The Philharmonia contrasts Verdi’s Requiem with a multimedia UK premiere of Julia Wolfe’s Fire In My Mouth: the Bamberger Symphoniker opens with a hot Romantic novelty, Hans Rott’s once-forgotten First Symphony; São Paulo-based Ilumina demonstrate their funky, itinerant performance style in what is also part of an expanded rerun of last year’s popular beanbag concerts. Other’s include Sir Mark Elder and his Hallé Orchestra’s illustrated tour of Mahler’s Fifth Symphony and Barokksolistene’s bawdy Alehouse Sessions.
Other Usher Hall highlights range from solo pianist Juja Wang and family concerts to Donald Runnicles in Bruckner 9. Morning sobriety prevails at the daily Queen’s Hall series, where pianist Steven Osborne and tenor Ian Bostridge star together among a classy lineup of talent.