Edinburgh International Festival programme 2021

The Edinburgh International Festival has announced its programme for August and after a virtual festival last year it’s great that we are going to see and hopefully hear some great music in August. Of course it is still a COVID influenced festival and that means mainly outdoor venues and socially distanced seating, no large foreign companies and very little live dance or theatre. Ironically this places music at the centre of the festival and classical music and opera as its flagship, although there will be a venue of amplified pop music at Edinburgh Park and some welcome strands of Scottish traditional music woven into the festival. Indeed with the Fringe Festival under threat as I write it could be said that the International Festival is broadening out to take account of wider musical taste and I suspect that this will be an enduring theme of the festival.

I do have worries about the suitability of the outside venues to deliver the acoustic quality expected for the International Festival. Edinburgh’s weather can be challenging in August!  I have written more extensively about these challenges in an article for ‘Slipped Disc’ (the biggest music blog in the world), but I hope I’m proved wrong and we have a warm, sunny August. I also worry about the character of the festival without the Usher Hall, the Queens Hall and the Festival Theatre (apart from ‘Falstaff’, and then with only 370 seats!) and I suspect many fewer overseas festival visitors. Will it really be an international festival at all?

However, casting aside these worries let us enjoy what’s there. Here are the thoughts of Kate Calder, one of our excellent reviewers:

Kate Calder: Reactions to EIF Programme 2021

It’s a while since I’ve seen a festival programme, and at first I was bewildered by the over-heated prose.  Even the venues are “iconic” – although like most Edinburgh residents I had to look up the locations of Edinburgh Park and the Edinburgh Academy junior school!

But through the hype I began to see that a workable programme for an international festival has been put together.  The orchestral input is largely from Scottish and London-based orchestras, and there’s a fair sprinkling of home-based talent – Nicola Benedetti, as musician in residence, Steven Osborne in a solo concert.  But many of the soloists, composers and conductors are from Europe and further afield.  The RSNO are paired with Argentinian cellist Sol Gabetta in a concert conducted by their Principal Guest conductor, Hong-Kong born Elim Chang.  Errolyn Wallen, the composer of ‘Dido’s Ghost’, was born in Belize and now lives in Scotland.  This opera performed by the Dunedin Ensemble features South African soprano Golda Schultz.  US mezzo, Joyce DiDonato, sings with a small Italian orchestra, Il Pomo d’Oro.   Chamber music concerts feature even more overseas players, with interesting emerging artists such as Mari Eriksmoen, the young Norwegian soprano and 20- year-old Dutch violinist Noa Wildschut.   

There are two other operas: an expanded version of David McVicar’s ‘Falstaff’, soon to be performed outdoors in Glasgow.  This is a staged performance which – no thermals required – takes place in the Festival Theatre.  ‘Outdoors -ish’ (in the covered area at the Junior School), Andrew Davis conducts a concert performance of ‘Ariadne auf Naxos’, with a cast including Dorothea Rōschmann, David Butt Philip, and – at last – Edinburgh’s Catriona Morison in a decent role in an opera in Scotland. 

On that subject, Malcolm Martineau is to be commended for a programme of songs and music influenced by Walter Scott.  Elizabeth Watt and Roderick Williams have lovely voices, but surely there might have been room for at least one Scots singer?

I’m looking forward to three events which are harder to categorise.  SCO off-shoot Mr McFall’s Chamber is playing with Shetland fiddler Jenna Reed and percussionist Harris Playfair in a concert which promises music from rock to cartoon classics, early music to tango. Barrie Kosky, iconoclastic Berlin Komische Oper director, takes to the piano to accompany actor/singer Katherine Meyling in ‘Lonely House’, a cabaret of works by Kurt Weill.  Shona the Musical Choir is a performance by an African/Scottish choir in excerpts from a Zimbabwean musical, a love-story which reflects the turmoil of Robert Mugabe’s time in government.

It will be good to see live performances.  Two questions – how much amplification will be required? The Old Quad, for instance, has an open exit onto a main road, and is hosting mainly chamber music and acoustic folk.  How much will we notice that the orchestras are smaller, and that there will be no choral works?

Finally, if you want tickets, get on and book soon, Friends’ booking has already begun and with limited seats, hot tickets like Renee Fleming, Joyce Di Donato and Falstaff are selling out fast. It may not be international. It may not be the festival as we know it,  but it still is going to be popular and a local audience starved of live music for over a year are determined to be there. Let’s hope it’s a success, but let’s also hope we are back to normal next year!