Continued: The Edinburgh International Festival: Where do we go from here?
As we come to the end of this year’s Festival, I thought it might be useful to jot down a few thoughts and ideas about how it went, and what lessons could be learned from this extraordinary cultural feast in its 2023 incarnation.
I have been to very little on the Fringe, although I myself have put on two contrasting concerts at different venues, both of which I found empowering and satisfying.
I have no interest in stand-up comedy, or cutting edge drama, or physical theatre and dance, and so my musings will naturally be confined, almost exclusively, to classical music, with a couple of forays off-piste. This filtering process is not unusual, as most Festival attendees are specific in their likes and dislikes, and there are others who can muse on different disciplines elsewhere.
As the EMR is largely a musical review site, it seems obvious to stick with what we know. I do, however, read ‘The Scotsman’s’ extensive Festival coverage each day to see what others are watching and enjoying/hating, and I can make a few observations from reading those reviews.
It seems clear that the vast majority of comedy events involve people using their own experiences of life, often quite bizarre experiences, to create comic situations or amusing observations. Without having seen any of these and basing my thoughts on the reviews (which may tell us more about the critics than the performance), it seems that this year the level of weirdness seems quite high. It may be that, in the aftermath of Covid, we have all gone through a period of time unlike any other, and that for many people, the breakdown of normal life has resulted in multiple strange experiences. There seems to be a huge increase in shows about the gay/queer/trans world, and this mirrors, I think, the extraordinary amount of publicity being given to gender politics in the media at the moment. Every comic and every new play seems to get a review, but the many musical events, both classical and non-classical, in the Fringe are ignored and given no publicity. Are they intrinsically inferior, or just less controversial? The EMR has tried to cover some of the musical events in the Fringe, and some reviewers have clocked up many hours and miles to bring less-well known music to your attention, but we are understandably limited in numbers. I have been less able to review this year, as I have had two concerts of my own to publicise and rehearse. There is nothing better than to perform in public and bring wonderful music into the lives of other people, and it is something that has been missing for me recently.
I have still been to several outstanding shows in the International Festival, and here we must, I think, salute to a large extent the first Festival of Nicola Benedetti. Not everything has worked, but a lot has, and I think it augurs well for the future.
Caveats first:
1) The frequent lack of programmes for many events is a huge mistake. Although there are protestations about the reason being to save the planet, it is clear that what is being saved is money. This is a false economy. Audiences need to know what they are hearing and who they are hearing, and this allows them to listen with an insight into the music and the musicians. As a performer myself, I hate when my audience has no idea who I am or what I have done, and I always make sure that I offer copious programme notes so that my listeners can understand what I am singing about.
Offering a bar code at the venue to find some (but not much) information is totally inadequate, and also ignores the demographic of many classical concerts whose patrons wouldn’t know what to do with it anyway!
2) The attempt at musical diversity has been too much, too soon. I know things must change and evolve, but in a world dominated by popular culture, it seems unnecessary to add so many previously unheard genres. The EIF is predominantly a celebration of classical music, with some theatre and dance in addition. We should not apologise for the great heritage of wonderful music available to us and engaging the finest exponents of this music to play and sing for us has been the cornerstone of the International Festival since 1947. Great art is great art, and the EIF exists primarily to bring us great art. Nicola Benedetti is a great violinist, and although she plays some non-classical music her fame and expertise is in her genre. Let’s keep that as the benchmark for the Festival. I have sung in both the Aix-en-Provence and Salzburg Festivals, the great European equivalents of Edinburgh, and they have strayed very little from their founding ideals.
I think the main problem is that the Fringe was created to be an adjunct to the International Festival in 1947 but has now grown to such enormous proportions itself that for many it is the main event, and to a large extent it has become a comedy festival. This leaves most other fringe activities in limbo, and so the EIF has decided to try to add fringe activities to itself. This, for me, dilutes the main thrust of the Festival, to be a showcase for the very best in classical music and theatre, and has resulted in the confusion about its purpose which we see in the over-diverse programme this year.
3) The dearth of fully staged and fully orchestrated opera is a worry. The problem with opera is that it is very expensive – singers, stagehands, lighting engineers, chorus, orchestra, costume wardrobe, make-up, dressers, front of house. All these people need to be paid to make one performance, which can never hope to break even. Yet, and I know I am slightly biased here, opera is the greatest of all musical art forms when performed at its best, and a festival like Edinburgh should have more of it. This year has perhaps the smallest amount of staged opera ever, and this can’t be allowed to continue.
My first appearance with Scottish Opera, in Puccini’s ‘Manon Lescaut’ in 1982, conducted by Sir Alexander Gibson, was at the Edinburgh Festival that year, in the King’s Theatre, and we opened the Festival a couple of years later with Cavalli’s ‘Orione’. Why on earth there is no provision for Scottish Opera to appear at modern Edinburgh Festivals, as part of their season, is a mystery. Putting on operas in the Festival as part of their season would save money and also thrust Scottish Opera into the international forefront. I hope Nicola is already in conversation with the relevant people!
Less edgy drama in the Festival and more opera, please!
4) The experiment, unannounced to the public, of so-called dynamic pricing should be discontinued. This system, used by airlines and by popular music venues, is quite unsuitable for EIF audiences, who should know what their seat will cost, regardless of popularity, whenever they book. The suggestion by the Festival management that this system allows them to sell lots of tickets to worthy poor people is sophistry. Whatever tickets are left over are obviously for the less well publicised or, dare I say it, more challenging performances. Are we really saying that only the ‘difficult’ performance will be at a discount? I suggest we return to a policy of pricing whereby each performance has a range of prices depending on where you sit, and nothing else! This is much fairer, and clear to everyone buying a ticket. Edinburgh prices are still very reasonable by international standards. Those festivals I referred to above, like Salzburg, Aix and Glyndebourne, charge much higher prices, but are also appealing to a different clientele. If Edinburgh is to maintain its reputation as a festival catering for locals as well as visitors, a pricing system catering for the better-off is not a great idea!
5) Finally, a plea to Nicola for more Early Music. Fergus Linehan was one of the first to bring a lot of early music to the EIF, after years of almost total neglect. With its several decent churches (notably Greyfriars, the Canongate and St Cuthbert’s, as well as the two major cathedrals, St Mary’s and St Giles’), Edinburgh has a wealth of venues suitable for Baroque and Renaissance music, as well as decent smaller venues, like St Cecilia’s Hall. There is a huge public demand for this sort of music, across the generations, and I felt this year was far more like the bad old days in this respect. Just one Handel and one Bach Queen’s Hall concert is not nearly enough. I have toured the world with great early music experts like Trevor Pinnock, Marc Minkowski, René Jacobs and the Hilliard Ensemble, and I have seen at first hand the wonderful audiences for top class Early Music. Let’s have more in Edinburgh please?
Bonus Points:
The Budapest Festival Orchestra’s visit was marvellous, and the pioneering work of the orchestra and its director, Ivan Fischer, is a beacon for the future. Less emphasis on formality and tradition in dress and performance, but with no lowering of musical standards, must be the template for the continuing success of classical music. To this end, the series of less formal events in the Hub were excellent and very welcome, as well as the introductory half concert, half interview events in the Usher Hall.
I’m going to throw an extra caveat in here, and, in a way, it’s a victim of its own success: the Hub is in a terrible position, squeezed in at the top of the Royal Mile, on the direct route to the Castle for the Tattoo. I know that the EIF tried to put on a minibus from Castle Terrace to the Hub, but it seems to have been a bit’ hit and miss’, and clearly doesn’t cater for many. This means that anyone with a disability is basically unable to get to Hub events, disenfranchising many of the very people the Festival is trying to tempt in. I got a taxi to George IV Bridge, and had to walk up the hill fighting off hordes of tourists, and coming out, I was forced to walk all the way down Johnston Terrace in the dark. Can another venue be found?
Back to the good points: the very nature of some of this year’s events forced audiences to make choices which in previous years they hadn’t made. The great thing about the EIF, still, is that you can rely on the quality of the performance you are about to experience, knowing full well that everything in the full programme has been vetted and chosen specially to be of the highest standard. You may not like it, you may disagree with the format or the presentation, but you can guarantee that the singing, playing, dancing, acting etc will be top class. This differentiates the EIF from most other festivals, and certainly from the Fringe, which by its very nature is offering ‘pot luck’ in most of its events. There were several events in the EIF which I attended, which I would not have tried in the Fringe, but was able to attend, safe in the knowledge that the standard would be high. There were many I decided not to go to, but that was more from a time point of view, and also a ‘being older’ point of view! My days of Festival saturation coverage are gone.
The quality of concerts I attended in the Usher Hall and the Queen’s Hall was uniformly high, and this brings me to the crux of the present dilemma, of which the EIF is part. We have seen the furore about the BBC’s intention to cut classical coverage and the Arts Council of England’s huge subsidy cuts to mainstream classical music. The Scottish Arts Council is similarly heavy-handed. Top quality classical music does not come cheap or quickly produced. Only years of training can lead to a fully mature singer or instrumentalist. Apart from the occasional freak or prodigy, most of us have to go through long rigorous years of learning our craft before we can offer our talent to the public. This cannot be avoided. The idea that by reaching out to the young, the uneducated, the uninterested somehow to discover burgeoning talent hiding unseen below the radar, is naive in the extreme and dangerous in practice. By objecting to the best, to excellence, to the elite, one demeans the art and lowers the standards. By seeking diversity above excellence, you lose out on all sides, whereas, in actual fact, you need both. You don’t pick a successful football or netball team by avoiding the best players. Why should you not pursue excellence at every turn? That’s the way the world works.
The other aspect I deplore about the present debate, involving music in particular, is the polarising of attitudes which leads to people apologising for classical music as elitist, colonialist, irrelevant to modern society, occidentalist, etc. Great art is great art is great art! Let’s stop being ashamed of our classical culture. By all means promote music from other cultures as well, but it’s not an ‘either or’ situation.
Here, I think, is where the Benedetti factor, as I call it, comes into its own, particularly in Scotland and even more particularly in Edinburgh. The choice of Nicola as Festival Director was a bold one, but, in my opinion, also a brilliant one. She is supremely talented, one of the finest violinists of her generation on a worldwide scale. She is the face and the voice of classical music in Scotland, and she has been ubiquitous this year, fronting all sorts of events and being confident enough to make big decisions. We need all this, and more, if the EIF is to progress in the right direction. A Scottish voice and an elite musical voice, she has the opportunity to appeal to vast swathes of the Scottish public, who have previously been ambivalent about culture and classical music. I am sick of the attitude which you hear all the time - ‘the festival’s no’ for me, it’s for posh folk!’ That is fundamentally and intrinsically rubbish, and we should not be embarrassed or ashamed of this culture.
I presented a concert last week in St Michael’s Church in Edinburgh (an excellent potential EIF venue by the way – a big roomy space with a large auditorium and a lovely acoustic), featuring three world premieres of music by Scottish composers, and a couple of older folk songs made popular in the 1970s by the Corries. Singing entirely in Scots or English, here was a Scottish opera singer, who has spent a lifetime in the great opera houses and concert halls of Europe and further afield, singing songs which appeal to Scottish audiences in Edinburgh. There’s nothing elitist about me (other than years of performing and training to be the best I can), nothing to be scared of, and certainly not posh!
Two weeks ago, in St Andrew’s and St George’s Church in George Street, I presented, with three younger colleagues on the cusp of stardom, and a supremely talented accompanist straight out of the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland, a programme of arias, duets and ensembles from 300 years of operatic music, to a rapt audience of 150 people, showing what a completely approachable art form opera is. Nothing elitist there.
These two personal examples are presented as a pointer for future Festivals. Scottish content, younger but excellent performers, and a mission to show that classical music is alive and well for the next generation, as opposed to the older ones.
We must be brave, Nicola Benedetti must be brave, the audiences must be brave. The future’s bright if we can take control of the argument. No apologies, no cringe, no embarrassment. Let’s shout out how good the Edinburgh Festival is! The Fringe can take care of itself, and we can be part of that too, but let’s hope the Edinburgh International Festival 2024 can be as good and indeed much better than this years. The roars of approval for ‘Tannhäuser’ with Sir Donald Runnicles on Friday and for Gustavo Dudamel and his Venezuelans on Saturday were heart-warming and cathartic.
Cover photo: Andrew Perry
