Edinburgh International Festival Launch
Fergus bows out with a bang or a whimper?
That’s the question that I’m thinking of this morning as we assemble for the press launch of the Edinburgh International Festival at the swish restaurant Dine, next to the Traverse Theatre. (What’s wrong with a bacon roll at the Hub, the traditional festival launch?) Last year I asked Fergus Linehan why he was leaving as director so soon, and he reminded me that 2022 would be his eighth Festival. Clearly time passes when we are enjoying ourselves, and overall I think Fergus has done a good job in difficult times of budget cuts and pandemics. We will never forget shivering in our big tents at last year’s Festival! In particular Fergus has extended the festival’s coverage of Scottish music, in particular a strong traditional music stream last year. Traditional folk music is one of the great strengths of Scottish culture, something previous festival directors tended to ignore, but then none of them were Scottish. In the case of the director before Fergus, Sir Jonathan Mills, he made it clear he wasn’t interested: “this is an international festival” was his favourite phrase! Well Fergus isn’t Scots, but he is Irish and knew Scottish culture well before he took the job and has done a great job of promoting it since he took over. I’m sure our first Scottish director Nicola Benedetti will continue that trend, as Nicola is very attuned to Scottish musical traditions as well as her classical repertoire.
Fergus launched the Festival programme at 9.30 am to around 30 hacks or arts journalists as we are more properly known, dwindling print circulation newspapers were represented as were the new normal, online music blogs or magazines like the Edinburgh Music Review. With print circulations slumping to ever lower figures I predict we will be the only show in town soon. Fergus ran through the programme with the aid of his support staff from classical music, theatre and dance. He didn’t take questions, but I did get a ten minute interview with him afterwards as well as a good discussion with the classical music associate director. As for Fergus he told me he was going to Australia to rest with his Australian wife and family but would look for a new job soon.
This is the 75th Edinburgh Festival and Fergus reminded us that the Festival began out of the rubble of the war and today the 75th Festival was taking place in the shadow of the war in Ukraine. Of course the Festival had already acted to sever its links with Valery Gergiev who was its President. Gergiev is a close confidant of Putin and it’s no surprise that he was dispatched, but Fergus reassured me that there would be no further Russian censorship of the Festival programme.
The first Festival also came out of and was dominated by opera, Rudolf Bing the first festival director had come from the Met and Glyndebourne and made opera a feature of the programme. This continued until recently, particularly under the leadership of Brian McMaster. The opera programme began getting thinner under the directorship of Jonathan Mills, so much so that Tim Ashley of the Guardian said during his time “the Edinburgh Festival can no longer be recognised as a festival of international repute as far as opera is concerned”. Fergus Linehan the outgoing festival director did have a vintage opera year five years ago to celebrate the 70th anniversary of the festival. Sadly this year, opera is the poor relation with only one staged opera ‘Rusalka’ from Garsington, and two concert performances of opera. Ed Gardner conducts the Bergen Symphony Orchestra rendition of ‘Salome’, with a very good cast led by Malin Bystrom, and Donald Runnicles conducts some good young singers from his Berlin opera house in ‘Fidelio’. Fergus Linehan admitted that it was a weak programme, but he said that in a post-pandemic situation few opera companies were willing to travel internationally and of course opera is expensive at a time of constrained budgets.
There are of course many other good musical things in the programme back in the Usher Hall and Queens Hall for the first time in 3 years and my theatre critic friends tell me the theatre programme is interesting. One remarkable omission is the lack of a Scottish traditional music programme which, as I mentioned above, featured strongly last year. Fergus acknowledged that last year’s folk music stream had been a success but said he had been approached by more traditional folk festivals who felt they might be threatened by the success of Edinburgh. However, he did promise there would be four folk concerts in addition to the published programme. One further note of concern which I raised with Fergus is the rising cost of tickets. Edinburgh has always been a very accessible festival, compared to say Salzburg, but ticket prices are creeping up and concessions for pensioners (the major age group of festival attendees) have disappeared. Minimum prices at the Usher Hall are £22 rising to £37 for big names and opera. I pointed out to Fergus that I’m going to see ‘Peter Grimes’ at Covent Garden for £9, and the Royal Opera has always kept Upper Slips tickets at a low accessible price.
Overall it’s a good though not a great programme, and we are all looking forward to a good festival in August with a full fringe programme as well. We are also looking forward to Nicola Benedetti taking over as next year’s director. I think she will be a great director and the music staff assured me she was getting full support from them in planning and she wouldn’t be giving up playing altogether. So Fergus departs with our thanks for 8 good festivals in difficult circumstances. Let’s hope that Nicola can continue that tradition. Edinburgh for all its faults is still the greatest arts festival in the world in one of the most beautiful cities in the world.
