Maestro Arts performers take part in digital Edinburgh Festival
The Coronavirus crisis has caused the cancellation of most summer festivals around the world, but the Edinburgh International Festival has created My Light Shines On, a series of special videos of performances that will be available on the festival’s YouTube channel from 8 August, alongside other live and pre-recorded performances.
Several Maestro Arts performers are taking part in the reconfigured festival. As part of the opening on 8 August, Paul Lewis celebrates Beethoven’s 250th anniversary with a performance of the Second Piano Concerto, accompanied by the Scottish Chamber Orchestra. Lewis has recently recorded the composer’s Bagatelles for Harmonia Mundi to great critical acclaim.
Lewis returns to Edinburgh on 26 August with tenor Mark Padmore for a recital of Clara Schumann’s Lieder and Robert Schumann’s Dichterliebe, as part of the Soundscapes chamber music series. Soundscapes concerts will be performed in the Festival's Hub and broadcast on loudspeakers in Princes Street Gardens, as well as on YouTube. Lewis closes the series on 28 August with Beethoven’s Fourth Concerto, in a chamber version, and the Fantasy Op.77, also accompanied by the Scottish Chamber Orchestra.
Lawrence Power gives the world premiere performance of Esa-Pekka Salonen’s objets trouvés for solo viola and drone, the third of his Lockdown Commissions, a series of ten new works for the instrument, recorded in empty venues as a response to the current crisis. The latest one will be filmed in the city's Queen’s Hall and available on YouTube from 8 August.
On 18 August, as part of Soundscapes, the Elias String Quartet performs Haydn’s String Quartet in E flat major Op.64 No.6, Sally Beamish’s Reed Stanzas and some traditional Scottish folk tunes arranged by the group’s second violinist, Donald Grant.
There will also be an archive element to the festival, with BBC Radio 3 broadcasting concerts from previous festivals. On 16 September, this includes a recording from the 2008 festival of Messiaen's Éclairs sur l’Au-Delà and Thomas Adès's Tevot, with Ilan Volkov conducting the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra.
Read the full programme here.
