Musical highlights few and far between but dancers lift the spirits

Published on Sunday 5 September 2010 16:21

Classical On PAPER, this year's classical music programme looked the strongest of any Jonathan Mills has produced. But exceptional highlights - in some cases, audiences - were fewer than expected.

The Finnish Radio Symphony Orchestra hit top form in two Nielsen symphonies under Sakari Oramo. Memorable moments, too, from the Royal Concertgebouw and Mariss Jansons in Mahler Three, from the RSNO in Ravel's L'heure Espagnol, and a supreme appearance by the precision-engineered Minnesota Orchestra and Osmo Vanska.

Mahler 8, under Donald Runnicles, matched its sell-out promise.

Festival opener El Nio was crippled by James Conlon's inept conducting - a wasted opportunity. Russian National Orchestra was woefully average. The Cleveland Orchestra did not give of its best.

A safe Queen's Hall series opened seductively with soprano Magdalena Kozena, and the Greyfriars' teatime series was another audience success.

A pity it took till week three for opera to hit the heights with the dazzling European premiere of Brett Dean's Bliss.

KENNETH WALTON

Dance

It's not unusual to find a wild card in the International Festival dance programme. Something a bit experimental and not entirely audience-friendly. This year, the assumption was made that New Zealand-based company MAU would fill that role - hence the half-empty theatres it performed to.

What a mistake that turned out to be. Both Tempest: Without a Body and Birds With Skymirrors touched viewers in a very deep and unexpected way, and I for one will never forget them.

Elsewhere, our expectations were largely met: Brazil's Grupo Corpo delivered a joyously uplifting double-bill; San Francisco's Along King Lines Ballet brought elegance, technical prowess and musical greatness to our door; and Pina Bausch's Tanztheater Wuppertal reminded us what a unique creative mind was lost to the world last year.

The only minor disappointment was Paco Pea Flamenco Dance Theatre, whose new show, Quimeras, featured superb music and dance, trapped inside a half-cooked show.

KELLY APTER

Theatre

IN A YEAR dominated by big orchestras and fabulous dance, the theatre programme for the 2010 International Festival has been more interesting and intriguing than brilliant or mind-blowing.

At the centre of the event, the National Theatre of Scotland and EIF co-production of Alastair Beaton's Caledonia attracted derision, admiration and debate in equal measures. Unsure whether to laugh or weep over the Darien disaster of 1696, which effectively finished Scotland as an independent nation, the show perhaps - for many Scots - struck too close to home for comfort.

Elsewhere, the most perfect and distinguished shows came from artists - the Wooster Group, Meredith Monk - shaped by the American cultural radicalism of the mid-20th century; the most thrilling came from the young Chilean director Guillermo Calderon with his blazing family tragi-comedy Diciembre, set in a dystopian future just four years away.

JOYCE MCMILLAN

And everywhere there was plenty of food for thought about the endless human drive to seek new worlds; and about how often those dreams end in tragedy, and bitter disillusion.

JOYCE MCMILLAN