Naji Hakim, St Giles' Cathedral, August 9 Four stars
BBC SSO Messiaen, Usher Hall, August 10 Four stars
Gabriela Montero, Queen's Hall, Tuesday Three stars
Gothenburg Symphony Orchestra, Usher Hall, Tuesday Two stars
Israel In Egypt,
Usher Hall, Wednesday Three stars
HOURS after the Olympic Games' opening ceremony, last Friday night's opening Edinburgh International Festival concert performance – no set, no costumes, no acting – of a wonderfully bawdy, colourful Kurt Weill and Bertolt Brecht cabaret opera was always going to seem just a little bit low key.
The Rise And Fall Of The City Of Mahagonny is an uncompromising attack on capitalism set to a blistering and grotesque musical landscape. But with conductor HK Gruber failing to transmit this verve to the RSNO, and Hannah Gordon's narrating an understated Morningside jolly, dramatically it was a damp squib.
However, the drama tap was on full for Saturday's Scottish Opera production of Smetana's rarely performed drawing room opera THE TWO WIDOWS, which was something of a surprise given both the dubious merits of the source material, the at times clunky rhyming translation, and the directors themselves, who gave Scottish Opera audiences a very static, dramatically spartan Seraglio earlier this year.
But not so this production, with Tobias Hoheisel and Imogen Kogge deploying everything from visual trickery to tight choreography to inject some life into the structure. The debut of Scottish Opera music director Francesco Corti in the pit kept everything tight and shapely, although he sometimes seemed to mistake speed for excitement.
Charting the progress of one merry widow matchmaking for her very dour cousin, the odd mix of jolly japes and anguish makes its points just a little too lengthily. But Kate Valentine was vibrant and engaging, while Jane Irwin as sad cousin Anezka was in mahogany voice.
Those who made the sprint in last week's ever-present rain up the hill to St Giles' Cathedral for the first of NAJI HAKIM's organ recitals were rewarded with a more cerebrally and musically satisfying end to the evening in the first of the Festival's mini-Messiaen centenary tributes. The St Giles' organ is a magnificent instrument and Hakim a worthy player – he succeeded Messiaen as organist at La Trinité church in Paris at the composer's request.
The opener, Messiaen's Msese de la Pentecote is a hypnotic piece of writing, the staggering, inventive sound world stretching the breadth of the organ, from great belly belches to mad cuckoo-clock chattering. Hakim's compositional response to the composer's death – Le Tombeau d'Olivier Messiaen – explores his predecessor's unique palette while giving us a taste of Hakim's own compositional style: full-bodied, virtuosic and leaning towards the mad circus ride school of organ composition.
The following evening, as the BBC SSO AND ILAN VOLKOV stormed through Thomas Adès' Tevot and a charged and convincing interpretation of Messiaen's massive last work, Éclairs sur l'au Delà, it became clear that Messiaen would provide the musical highlights of the opening week. It was such a shame to see the Usher Hall so empty.
Adès' Second Symphony, Tevot (from the Hebrew), is a meaty and rewarding work, the orchestra at times sounding like chicks cheeping for food, at others like some great infernal machine; Volkov answering Adès' intensity with driven force. The Messiaen, by contrast, is an 11-part journey to religious ecstasy, not entirely convincing as a whole, but nurtured by Volkov in the silences as much as the music, from the cosmic wonder of La Constellation du Sagittaire to the cacophony of trademark birdsong blasting through the 9th, ending on a note of magical transcendence.
Tuesday morning's Queen's Hall recital saw GABRIELA MONTERO, the Venezuelan classical pianist who has become rather more famous for her improvisational skills than her repertoire, in a straight-up concert programme with a distinctive narrative bent. But this was a disappointing performance: the opening Bach Chaconne, arranged by Busoni, hammered out in harsh tone that didn't leave her anywhere to go dynamically. She brought a lighter touch to the Chopin Ballades, but her own rather loose expressionist touch more suited the Debussy L'Isle Joyeux that followed with its descriptive shimmers. The audience, however, were enthralled by her encore, an improvisation on Flower Of Scotland, intoned for her benefit by the crowd – a scene later repeated in her intimate improvisation-only concert at The Hub. Montero is an engaging stage presence, with intermittent flashes of brilliance, which only leaves one wishing she'd lavish a bit more attention on her interpretations of repertoire.
Another much-anticipated Venezuelan picked up the baton in the Usher Hall following his much talked about debut last year with the Simon Bolivar Youth Orchestra. Gustavo Dudamel returned as music director of the GOTHENBURG SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA, a band with which, on this showing, he seems to have very little connection. Fielding a programme – much like Montero – of visually descriptive pieces, from Copland's Appalachian Spring to Berlioz's Symphonie Fantastique, the disparity between the effervescent jumps of the man on the podium and the messy entries and by rote playing of his musicians was all too apparent.
French conductor Emmanuelle Haïm proved rather more adept at handling vast forces the following evening in her very precise, period music making with the SCO and Handel's biblical oratorio ISRAEL IN EGYPT. A rather wan beginning became a showcase for the Edinburgh Festival Chorus. New chorus master Christopher Bell has clearly been drilling them with Chinese Olympic efficiency. v
Edinburgh International Festival continues until August 31
www.eif.co.uk