EIF reviews: BBC SSO | Bat for Lashes | Scott Silven

Natasha Khan, aka Bat for Lashes, at the Queen's Hall on Friday. | Jess Shurte and EIF

MUSIC

BBC SSO & Sir Donald Runnicles *****

Usher Hall

Connections are the heartbeat of music programming. Here we had the age-old pairing of Mahler and Bruckner, easily identifiable by their characteristic differences, but together a spine-tingling encapsulation of Austro-German largesse. To deliver that, we had the seductive chemistry that Sir Donald Runnicles and the BBC SSO demonstrate every time they reunite.

As if responding to the flick of a switch, Mahler’s Der Schildwache Nachtlied, the first in the selection from Des Knaben Wunderhorn, burst vividly into life, its orchestral sparkle fizzing with febrile delicacy, baritone Thomas Lehman characterfully animated from the word go. He and fellow Deutsche Oper mezzo soprano Annika Schlicht shared the solo honours, the latter - her lower register resonating from her boots, the upper reaches chillingly penetrating - at her most sublime in the primeval aura of Urlicht.

Bruckner’s unfinished Symphony No 9 was a triumph of extremes, Runnicles complementing its organic massiveness with the richest detailing of colour and nuance, the complete Rolls Royce experience. After the expansive, all-consuming luxury of the opening movement, the Scherzo bristled with attitude before the agonising swoop that heralds the Adagio, its tussle between the sublime and the demonic, and an ending perfectly complete in itself. 

Ken Walton

MUSIC 

Bat For Lashes ****

Queen’s Hall

Natasha Khan aka Bat For Lashes is a fascinating shape-shifting artist, heading where her instinct takes her and letting the creative chips fall where she may. She returns post-lockdown as a new mother with an album inspired by her young daughter. The Dream of Delphi is more gauzy fever dream than soothing lullaby. Backed by solo piano, she unleashed celestial pitch-shifted harmonies, creating an intoxicating choir of Khans with the deep thrum of bass seeping into the mix. Along with her bandmates Laura Groves and Charlotte Hatherley, she offered her devotions upwards.   

This quasi-ceremonial opening was followed by the throbbing incantation of The Hunter from her 2019 album Lost Girls, an entirely contrasting nocturnal neon odyssey inspired by her then home of Los Angeles, and then back to her roots for Sarah, the first of several mercurial character songs. Daniel, arguably her best known song, was reworked as a moody New Romantic synth number in keeping with the tone of the set.   

Even with laryngitis, Khan is many voices. There were shades of Brian Eno and Kate Bush in Tahiti’s mix of ethereal expression and plangent synthesizer chords, Moon and Moon was a sensual solo piano piece, Let’s Get Lost from the Twilight soundtrack “another song about vampires”, Wilderness her celebration of wild swimming and female friendship and the drum-led cathartic invocation of Close Encounters was her take on loving the alien. Khan also read a couple of poems from The Dream of Delphi, missives to leave behind for her daughter in the decades to come, inspired by Maya Angelou’s Letter To My Daughter. Even though it was written many years before Delphi’s birth, one suspects that the soaring purity of final song Laura might also provide a comfort blanket in the future.

Fiona Shepherd

MAGIC

Scott Silven: Wonders ****

The Hub

It’s hard not to feel sorry for mentalists performing on the British stage. For while audiences always clap politely at the incredible feats being delivered, you can still cut the scepticism with a knife. Indeed, one participant Scott Silven invited up on Friday evening stood with her arms folded, wearing her best ‘come on then, impress me’ expression. A few minutes prior, we’d all been asked to think of an old friend, and a word from the dictionary. When Silven, via the twists and turns of showmanship, eventually handed our sceptic a page from the dictionary with her word highlighted, and a necklace with her friend’s initials on, her expression changed from challenge to confusion. How did he do that?

That’s the question that hovers over everything in Wonders. The first illusionist to make it into the Edinburgh International Festival programme, Lanarkshire-born, New York-based Silven knows what we’re thinking even before we do. Guessing images in our heads, words we’ve scribbled on bits of paper, places we’ve been on holiday and much more, his ability to read body language and internal processing is consistently impressive. The drama Silven padded around each ‘trick’ felta little flannel-heavy at times, but then mentalism isn’t exactly known for its subtlety.

Kelly Apter