EIF 2025: News 2
EIF 2025: News 2
Make it Happen – The Reviews are in
The first night of ‘Make it Happen’ was on Friday 1st August. Word of mouth and reviews are mainly positive with the Telegraph going for 5 stars and The Scotsman for 4. The Guardian called it a “Musical” in its heading – making the lack of a review ticket for the Edinburgh Music Review seem odd. There were comments about the play’s length, with Joyce McMillan claiming it ran almost an hour over the length in the EIF brochure that was “hours 10 minutes and the EIF website now says 2 hours 40 minutes… I will find out at the Wednesday matinee for which I’ve had tickets since March.
Mairi Campbell (with Jimmy Shand) on Radio 3
Tom Service’s ‘Saturday Morning on Saturday 2nd August came live from the Hub, and introduced us to young musicians from the NYO2 youth orchestra whose short residency is on 3rd and 4th August at the Usher Hall. Tom’s sole Fringe pick is Mairi Campbell, whose trilogy of shows is on at the Story-Telling Centre see Preview: Music on the Fringe — Edinburgh Music Review Don’t miss ‘I Want to Build a Band that Sounds Like Jimmy Shand’ 30 minutes in!
Look out for cheaper tickets on the day
Tickets from £25 in the Stalls and £12.50 for the Upper Circle are available for tonight’s (3rd August) NYO2 concert, which is probably around their original (March) price. The orchestra are playing Prokofiev 5th and Shostakovich’s Cello Concerto, a programme which they played at the Carnegie Hall New York last week, after extensive rehearsals in their home states and together. No reductions yet for ‘The Monteverdi Choir’ on 4th (which has sold fewer tickets), but you may strike lucky tomorrow, The NYO2’s Family Concert at 2pm is still £10 for adults and children - not sure if you still need to ‘be accompanied by a responsible child.’
Better Website Information
EMR writers complained last year about less than satisfactory online programme information. There’s a distinct improvement this year. The advance provision of short videos is helpful – see, for example, the splendid documentary about Pavel Kolesnikov and Samson Tsoy. Kate Molleson is back with ‘The Warm Up’ before each concert, thankfully now about the music rather than musicians’ pre-show rituals, last year’s less than edifying topic! Also new under the ‘Programme’ heading, there are full lists of works, often with specific timings. We’re also promised better onstage information via surtitles at the Usher Hall and the Queen’s Hall.
Improvisation – a lost art or always part of live performance?
Tom Service hit on a musical controversy in ‘Saturday Morning’. 20 minutes in Nicola Benedetti speaking about Classical Jam, a Hub concert in which the audience chooses the music, said she’d like to bring back the art of improvistion, something modern musicians have been trained out of it at conservatoires. Later Maxim Emelyanychev (who probably didn’t hear her) talked about his Proms Beethoven 5 last week and his EIF ‘Clemenza di Tito’ on Saturday 6th both with the SCO, and said that improvisation ‘always’ happens in live performance - he’s playing forte-piano recitatives in Tito so we’ll certainly hear it then! Something to think about.
photo credit: Chris Lee
