If it's Friday it must be the Usher Hall.............

............again............we've been to this................

ISRAEL IN EGYPT****USHER HALL
IF EVER Handel wrote a showcase for the chorus, it was this 1730s oratorio. The onus was on the Edinburgh Festival Chorus to deliver the goods, and that it did, to an extent we have rarely heard in recent years.The transformation can be pinned down to one man, Christopher Bell, who took over the chorus directorship last year. Last night's performance was effectively the full chorus's maiden voyage under his charge.The impact has clearly been immediate. Diction that was as clear as a whistle, rhythmic energy and precision and, for the most part, bright and accurate intonation, coloured this operatically-charged jigsaw of mainly short, dramatic choruses with enough stylish piquance to call this a genuinely vivid Handel performance.But such a bristling account of the oratorio was ultimately down to the sum of its parts. At the helm, the refined but animated presence of Emmanuelle Haim shaped the work with a gutsy combination of tautness, flexibility, definition and refinement.A cohesive solo team – among them the glowing voices of soprano Lucy Crowe, tenor Mark Tucker and bass Matthew Brook – contributed to the slickness of the performance, not least in the exquisite duos, as did the ever-reliable Scottish Chamber Orchestra.

and this.....................

Pratchett's world works on stage


By THOM DIBDIN
Wyrd Sisters Mayfield Salisbury Church
IT'S a weird job, but someone had to do it – bringing Terry Pratchett's Discworld novels to the stage. And Stephen Briggs' adaptation serves just fine in pulling Pratchett's strangely warped imaginings off the page.It's not an easy play to stage, however, and while Arkle Theatre Company have a blast bringing the characters to life, their presentation leaves a lot to be desired.Leading the way are the Wyrd Sisters themselves, three witches who inhabit the far distant mountain land of Lancre. It's a backward country, still close to nature, where witches still mediate the relationship between humans and the land.Bev Wright is in top form as chief witch, Granny Weatherwax. There's enough of the Morningside about her manner to indicate a woman who is not to be trifled with.Her scabby and odorous sidekick, Nanny Ogg, is strongly characterised by Carol Davidson, while Charlotte Bunting is equally good as young Magrat Garlick, who might be naive in the ways of men, but is far from simple.The actual plot revolves around Lord and Lady Felmet who have just killed the old king in a Macbeth-like orgy of blood. Saving the king's infant son, the Wyrd Sisters send him off to be brought up by travelling players until he is old enough to regain the throne.Gordon Craig needs to be a touch more deliberate as Lord Felmet, although his troubled nature is perfectly rendered. Fiona Main could afford to echo her outrageous Goth costume with her mannerisms. Tony Sehgal succeeds in appearing both wise and foolish as the court Jester. However, having created a brilliantly layered playing area, in which at least three different scenes could be played at the same time, Arkle singularly fail to make full use of it. So, instead of a production which glides smoothly along, this jumps back and forth with interminable blackouts as the stage is reset, again and again.Director Rae Lamond has helped his large cast conquer the tricky knack of playing Pratchett, from the sisters themselves down to the lowliest sword carrier. Sadly the production does not do the performances justice.

and this..................

MONTEVERDI CHOIR***USHER HALL
LET'S just pass on the fact that the Usher Hall was not the ideal location for Schutz's opulent Musikalische Exequien, which formed part of this rare Scottish sighting of Sir John Eliot Gardiner, his Monteverdi Choir and Orchestre Revolutionnaire et Romantique. You simply don't get the right aural or visual experience in a concert hall that a cathedral or large church would provide. And it robbed us of something potentially thrilling, given the piercing clarity and rich antiphonal properties of the music.You could argue, too, that Brahms's Begrabnisgesang – another burial hymn – lost impact for the same reason, although its pungent wind and brass accompaniment, together with an expressive range almost Brucknerian in scale, left it relatively unscathed.The real triumph of the evening – and a revelation, too, given this specialist band's feisty affinity for period performance – was undoubtedly Brahms's Requiem.How many times do we hear it turned into a dirge? In Gardiner's hands it possessed an ecstatic warmth, despite some iffy wind entries and the odd discrepancy between choir and orchestra.But we'll remember this more for the edgy brilliance of the horn playing and choral singing of impeccable beauty.

Don't agree with any of the reviews of course..................the Handel was great and the EFC were indeed better than they've been for years...........you could tell the bits they'd gone over and over by the expressions of intense concentration..............and the plagues of Egypt were graphic, we loved the Flies and Lice!...............there was almost nothing for the soloists to do, and Marion's old classmate Clare de Bono had barely four lines to sing, hardly worth climbing into the frock for.
Rae's show at Mayfield was really good we thought and the review is unfair. the cast couldn't really have done much more with it than they did, all very well to criticise the production but i don't suppose they had any money so they did well and bits of it were very funny.
the Monteverdi Choir were just amazing..........real quality stuff, so perfect it hurt. but the Brahms sounded very odd and took a bit of getting used to..............again performed with absolute perfection, superb diction, crisp endings etc etc............just not how we're used to hearing it. we had Alice King with us, having been to hear her talk on her book "High Sobriety" along with Stepahnie Merrit on her book "The Devil Within"...............haven't read that one and it doesn't sound like a bundle of laughs. nor was she..................very intense, like an extremely well-bred and highly-strung greyhound, and possibly a bit snappy with it..............the Book Fest is always such an oasis of civilization in the midst of the frenzy, even though it was lashing with rain as it has done for most of the Fest off-and-on. Gail and Rachel borrowed our sailing kit to go to the Tattoo, that's how bad it's been...............
Tonight it was off to the Usher hall yet again to see Anne-Sofie von Otter with Les Arts Florissants and a programme of French baroque............i suspect there's an album in the offing. i've never seen her before and she's quite a performer...............much to our disappointment she didn't do "The Winner takes It All" as her encore, just some soppy thing in which the theorbo player caused great excitement by bashing the mikes with the neck of his instrument so the whole audience were torn between being hypnotised by the beauty of the diva's voice and by the swaying of the mike which had started to move in time to the music..............we took John with us as Marion had pulled out (AGAIN!!), he's the sort of guy who would enjoy anything you took him to, so he duly did.............and we met Kate in the interval for a discussion of bustles...........