EIF 26: Beth Taylor and Hamish Brown
Queen’s Hall, 11/8/2026
Beth Taylor (mezzo-soprano) and Hamish Brown (piano)
EMR readers will be aware that I have known, encouraged and supported Beth Taylor for almost seven years now, and have watched as this amazing young Scottish singer has gradually climbed into the ranks of the great singers of the world, while still remaining one of the most down to earth and generous of colleagues. For that reason, I am going to dispense with my usual rules for this review and not refer to her as Ms Taylor or Mrs Kennedy as she has been for nearly a year, but as Beth. I am as objective as ever, but it seems silly to be so formal.
This recital in the Queen’s Hall marked the debut at the Edinburgh International Festival for Beth and her brilliant accompanist, Hamish Brown, and the ovation at the end suggests that it will not be their last!
Today’s recital was somewhat ambitious, featuring a programme of entirely unfamiliar music by composers of whom most of the audience was largely ignorant. Beth and Hamish had curated a fascinating selection of songs by Augusta Holmès, Lily Boulanger, Cameron Biles-Liddell, Ethel Smythe, Fanny Mendelssohn Hensel, Connie Converse, Clara Schumann, Germaine Tailleferre and Stuart MacRae, with a very strong bias towards music by female composers, and including a world premiere.
The concert got off to a slightly rocky start, with Beth singing at the rear of the church a 12th century antiphon by Hildegard of Bingen, to a drone accompaniment. The bare ancient melody didn’t really suit her voice, and she sounded understandably nervous.
However, she soon arrived on the stage and launched into two songs by the Wagner-inspired Irish/French composer, Augusta Holmès, which were absolutely terrific, especially the second, Le Vin, part of a collection, ‘Les Sept Ivresses’, exploring seven states of intense intoxication or rapture. For me, these were the highlight of a fabulous recital that will linger long in the memory, performed by an artist with a truly great voice, equipped with a phenomenal interpretative ability. The audience went wild, and that rapture continued throughout the concert. I have seen many great singers here at the Festival, and this recital was up there with the best.
Further highlights for me were two songs composed for the duo by the Welsh composer, Cameron Biles-Liddell, in 2024, ‘The Breakers’, a superb evocation of seascapes, and an Orkney folksong, arranged by Mr Biles-Liddell, The Grey Selkie o’ Sule Skerry. Congratulations to the EIF for providing texts and translations of all the songs on a screen above the performers. I loved four short songs from a cycle of 11 by Germaine Tailleferre, dating from 1959, ‘Handbill for an Entrance’, witty and succinct, reminiscent of Poulenc’s style but entirely individual.
The recital ended with a world premiere, ‘Medusa’, by Stuart MacRae (words by S L Williams), a suitably macabre setting of the story of Medusa. Beth and Hamish gave this music full throttle, and their collaboration typified the success of the whole concert. With a range from deepest contralto to gleaming high notes, Beth Taylor possesses one of the finest voices in the world at the moment, with an interpretive intelligence of the highest quality, while Hamish Brown is a most sensitive and dramatic accompanist, with a fabulous technique.
The duo was badly served by the Festival, however, which produced a programme with precisely no information about the music we heard. A recital of entirely unknown music was represented by a list of songs and composers (last names only!), and that was it! Not good enough!
The concert, however, was an absolute triumph.
You can hear Beth Taylor again this Friday, August 14th, at 2.30pm in the New Town Church in George Street, in a great concert of French Opera, alongside myself and three other wonderful young singers. Please come along.
