Music Showcase at the Hub
The Hub, Edinburgh - 04/08/24
Music Showcase at the Hub: Nicola Benedetti (co-host), Greg Lawson – violin, Schola Cantorum, Orquesta La Pasión musicians, Leonore Piano Trio, Soumik Datta – sarod, Lara Cowin, Suzanne Andrade – readers, Osvaldo Golijov – composer, co-host.
Last year the Hub – an impressive, Gothic-spired public arts and events space which also houses the Edinburgh International Festival offices – very much lived up to its name as a thriving, cross-community, participative venue for music, immersive performance and multi-voiced conversation.
This year, Festival director Nicola Benedetti co-hosted another spectacular musical showcase for the Hub’s first, late-night opening. She did so alongside Argentinian composer Osvaldo Golijov, whose La Pasión Según San Marcos had been performed to considerable acclaim the previous evening.
Featuring the violinist’s “handpicked music icons”, the evening was effectively a taster for the enriching variety that the ‘Rituals That Unite Us’ EIF theme aims to embrace, while maintaining its commitment to the highest artistic standards – whether in classical music, drama, opera, Scottish traditional music, or other kinds of innovative artistic expression.
Venezuela’s Schola Cantorum, conducted by Vivian Tabbush, began proceedings with a richly layered and sparkling performance of her arrangement of the traditional song, La Chapparita, filling the stage and auditorium with elevating sonority.
Next, a talented trio from Orquesta La Pasión, introduced by Golijov himself, took us to a Latin jazz place, with clear influences from Brazil and Cuba as well as Venezuela.
Lara Cowin’s reading of Karin Boye’s poignant verse, ‘Of course it hurts’, provided the skilled technical staff the first of many opportunities to re-set the stage and implement the visual and acoustic requirements for a planned Sky Arts television broadcast of the whole concert later in the year.
Nicola Benedetti was then joined by legendary mezzo-soprano Dame Sarah Connolly, Andrew Forbes (piano) and Gemma Rosefield (cello) for a tender rendition of Mary’s Magdalene’s aria ‘Erbarme Dich, Mein Gott’, from Bach’s St Matthew Passion, which co-billed as the Festival opener along with Golijov’s ‘La Pasión’.
The next shift was to India, and master sarod player and composer Soumik Datta. His newly-minted North Indian lute teased its way into the ‘Rituals of Rain’ raga with haunting semitones, before building towards a climactic intensity and gentle release.
A second reading from ‘Where to begin?’, by Davey Anderson (beautifully delivered by Suzanne Andrade) was followed by the return of Schola Cantorum and the appropriately festive Vasallos del Sol song, ‘Cantos de mi Tierra’.
The mood changed dramatically with the melancholy, tortured but exquisite textures of the heart-stopping second, slow movement from Beethoven’s ‘Ghost’ Trio. The Leonore Piano Trio’s performance was a model of expressive generosity towards the agony of a great composer living and suffering at the very edges of his creative art.
How to follow that? Difficult. Orquesta La Pasión members Gonzalo Grau (piano/ cajon), David Pena (bass) and Gioconda Cabrera (vocals) provided a thoughtfully different atmosphere with their touchingly personal bolero and Nesto Mili’s ‘Yerbero Moderno’.
The last number brought almost everyone back on to the stage for a dramatic finale miraculously curated by cross-genre Scottish violinist Greg Lawson. Nicola Benedetti began with a Burns solo of ‘A Man’s a Man for a’ That’, segueing into a Lawson-led Galician tune, a sarod interlude, the ‘Tongadale Reel’ and an unusual choral-amplified ‘Fairy Dance Reel’.
Streamers burst upon musicians and audience as the very last notes died away, ending a night of joyous celebration and eager anticipation.
Photo credit: @EIF Jess Shurte
