Family Concert
Usher Hall, Edinburgh, 25/8/24
Philharmonia Orchestra, Lucy Drever, presenter, Nicola Benedetti, violin
As part of the Festival’s attempt to broaden its appeal in the community they invited mothers and fathers with their children to the Usher Hall on the last Sunday afternoon of the Festival. The price was £10 for adults but you should bring a responsible child! Fortunately, the Festival didn’t insist on the EMR reviewer bringing a child, as my grandson Ollie was 200 miles away! Well it worked; the Usher Hall was packed with children from babes in arms to teenagers and mainly their mothers to try and keep them in order, and mainly succeeding! The welcoming Usher Hall attendants gave us all flags of bees to wave during the concert and of course the final number was ‘Flight of the Bumblebee’!
The concert was presented by Lucy Drever, who did a great job in getting the children engaged and demystifying the classical concert. She introduced the Philharmonia Orchestra to the children and young people and explained how they worked and also the role of the conductor Mathew Lynch. The first musical item brought forward Festival Director, Nicola Benedetti, who was met as always with a wall of love. I have been attending the Festival for more than 50 years and I can tell you that no Festival Director was as loved as Nicky is. Of course it helps that she is the first Scot to direct the Festival, the first woman, and the first musician, indeed a world class musician, as she demonstrated in her performance of Vaughan Williams’ ‘Lark Ascending’. The only problem with this work is it’s a very quiet, indeed at times ethereal, and occasionally got lost behind the noise from the more voluble children.
The second work was Saint-Saens’ ‘Carnival of the Animals’ which Lucy introduced. She got the children involved with the different animals, and the Philharmonia musicians were of course wonderful. It was much enjoyed and warmly applauded. The final work of this short one hour concert was Rimsky-Korsakov’s ‘Flight of the Bumblebee’ which gave us all a chance to wave our bees flags. You could say this concert ended with a buzz!
Overall the concert was a great success and hopefully will become a regular feature of the Festival. I also hope that some of the young people will come back to the Festival as adults. When I first came to the Festival over 50 years ago I worried that the audiences were largely grey-haired older people. Now I’m one of those people I still worry about younger people coming to music. The good news is that in Scotland we have a lot of good initiatives, such as the Big Noise, or Plockton Music School, a Centre for Excellence for traditional music, and in Edinburgh Clea Friend’s Stockbridge Community Hub. Nicola Benedetti has of course been working with her foundation with young musicians for years and is the perfect person to make the festival connect to young people.
This is my final festival review this year. EMR reviewers have reviewed more than 50 concerts and operas over the past three weeks. The view of us all is this has been a great festival, with more operas and many excellent concerts. Although we have occasionally been critical - as is after all the role of the critic - overall it has been of a high musical quality. Over it all Nicola Benedetti has been present, and as a mother with a three month old baby that’s pretty remarkable. This is Nicky’s second festival and I think we can already say that she is going to be one of the great Festival Directors. The only dark cloud on the horizon is the funding crisis, which is besetting all the arts in Scotland, indeed in Britain. If anyone can help the Festival survive this crisis it’s Nichola Benedetti, and the Edinburgh Music Review while remaining critical will be fully supportive of her.
