Preview: Bank of Scotland Fireworks Concert, Princes Street Gardens

Published on Tuesday 31 August 2010 11:57

A SEA of faces look up towards the castle as the orchestra reach a dramatic crescendo and a playful palette of colour fills the sky.

A stunning end to another Edinburgh International Festival (EIF), in the most picturesque of settings, the Bank of Scotland Fireworks Concert is, for many, as much an institution as the Festival jamboree itself.

Bold, bright and utterly spectacular, year on year it captures beautifully the passion and verve of the theatre, dance and music that comes before it and this year looks set to be no less spectacular.

Building on the EIF's theme of new worlds, 2010's concert celebrates the greats from American film music, with a selection of composers that are all European emigres or first generation Americans from emigre parents. Conductor Clark Rundell will lead the Scottish Chamber Orchestra in a programme he refers to as "treasures from a delightful goldmine."

"One of the interesting musical anomalies is that a lot of the composers who fled to America in the middle of the 20th century ended up in Hollywood, composing for movie scores," explains Rundell, "so there's this delightful goldmine to choose from. We had to fill around 40 minutes for the concert but the music from that era was so fantastic that we could have chosen hours and hours of material."

This year's concert showcases Erich Korngold's Kings Row (famous for influencing John Williams' Star Wars score), Leonard Bernstein's dramatic urban imagining forOn the Waterfront, Bernard Herrmann'swonderful Marnie, with Franz Waxman'sincredible and ever-popular Taras Bulba closing proceedings.

"It feels like a wonderful mix," says Rundell. "Korngold spent most of his life as a concert composer, while Bernstein's On the Waterfront has a sort of cult status with the Marlon Brando connection; Herrmann has this incredibly tender and gentle approach to his writing and Waxman is the master of the big scene - he's remembered for his wonderful chase scenes - so there's a real dark and light in there."

Such a change of tempos and playful journeying from the light to the dark aspects of the music will doubtless help shape the main visual spectacle of the piece, the fireworks themselves.

Rundell, who conducted the Bank of Scotland Fireworks Concert two years ago, admits the experience is unrivalled. "It's quite amazing," he says with a laugh. "The coordination is extraordinary. Pyrovision are the stars of the show in a lot of ways. We choose a basic tempo and they stick with that, in the end it's like a ballet they have choreographed to make the images and scores work together."

Additional excitement, admits Rundell, comes with the realisation that beyond the musicians on the stage, and the audience in Princes Street Gardens, people are watching from across the city, from Carlton Hill and Waverley Station to Inverleith Park, with around a quarter of million spectators expected to enjoy this year's festivities. Having had the experience of working with Pyrovision, who plan and coordinate the fireworks aspect of the show, Rundell was keen to select music that would help do the showcase justice. "I wanted to give the guys something to really hang on to, to really help make it a multi-sensory spectacle." He continues, "The Scottish Chamber Orchestra have such ownership of the music they play, so it's really about a creating a cohesive experience between the visual and the sound, in the most majestic of settings."

For Keith Webb, sky director with Pyrovision, many of the elements are coming together long before the orchestra and Rundell take to their stands on Sunday. Having been given a disc of potential tracks, Webb listens to them before reporting back. When the final selection is made he then spends months listening to the tracks over and over, creating potential images for the night in his mind. Years of experience has ensured that over time ideas gel together as Webb researches what each piece means, as well as the tempos and the materials and fireworks at his disposal.

"It's like writing a music score only with fireworks," he says, keen for the fireworks show to explain the story of the music in some way. 'For instance On the Waterfront is quite moody. You get a real sense of Marlon Brando on a dodgy area of the docks, so it becomes about how you translate that through the fireworks.'

Moreover, if audiences think it's a hands-off, digital affair, they should think again. A staggering 12 tonnes of equipment and over 100,000 fireworks go into the castle, along with two weeks design time before the performance and a 15-heavy crew. On the night itself, it's all hands on deck.

"A lot of people assume because of the sheer scale that it's done digitally but that's just not the case. A computer can't follow a conductor so the whole display, bar a few sequences, is manually fired. By the time the night comes I know the music back to front and inside out. About ten minutes before," says Webb adding, "I tell myself not to look over the battlements of the castle to the people below but I always do. It never stops being thrilling. The castle is a stunning backdrop whatever the event but with the music and the huge crowds, it's just about making it the sense of occasion it deserves to be."

Bank Of Scotland Fireworks Concert, Princes Street Gardens, Sunday, 9pm, 0131-473 2000

The concert will be broadcast live on 97.3 Forth one and 1548 Forth2, from 8.30pm