Compliments to the SCO as Festival ends in style

Published on Monday 3 September 2007 12:08

Bank of Scotland Fireworks Concert ****

Princes Street Gardens

THIS year's Edinburgh International Festival kicked off with a performance of Leonard Bernstein's Candide, and its overture opened the Festival's closing fireworks spree.

It was undoubtedly a good idea to base the display on a selection of American music.

Bernstein's broad melody, Soon, When We Feel We Can Afford It, was treated with criss-crossing spurts that were gently carried away over the Esplanade by a west wind. Pyrotechnicians Wilf Scott and Keith Webb made it clear from the start that they would scale their kaleidoscopic images to accord with the dynamic structure of the music.

Keith Webb choreographed the spectacle that accompanied Samuel Barber's Adagio for Strings. Originally written as part of a String Quartet in B minor, the Adagio movement in its arrangement for string orchestra received its debut UK performance at the first EIF in 1947.

One episode of the Copland Buckaroo Holiday from Rodeo was intended to represent a drunken cowboy. The music's jumpy syncopations go well with that concept.

The promised 'surprise encore' was an open secret, for the title of March King John Phillip Sousa's Liberty Bell had accidentally found its way into the Festival brochure. It is best known as the signature tune of Monty Python.

Compliments are due to the Scottish Chamber Orchestra, for their lively response to conductor Clark Rundell's direction, and for their varied contributions to other events over the past three weeks.