Five Things to do in Edinburgh: Tuesday 29 August

Your pick of the city’s nights out

• MUSIC: City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra. Conductor Andris Nelsons and Latvian-born violinist Baiba Skride play Sofia Gubaidulina’s Offertorium concerto for violin and orchestra and Sibelius’ Symphony No 2. Often considered to embody the spirit of Finnish nationalism, Sibelius’s Second Symphony is one of the composer’s warmest pieces. The violin concerto Offertorium by Tartar-born composer Sofia Gubaidulina has become a modern classic. Written in defiance of Soviet oppression, its score was smuggled out of the USSR for its 1981 premiere in Vienna. Usher Hall, Lothian Road, 8pm, £12-£42, eif.co.uk/cbso, 0131-473 2000

• THEATRE: Les Naufragés du Fol Espoir (Aurores) / The Castaways of the Fol Espoir (Sunrises). In a dance hall in the spring before the First World War, a socialist visionary is shooting a silent film adapted from a Jules Verne adventure, using cooks and waiters as his cast. A gold rush, a group of genocidal Indian hunters foiled by commando nuns, a runaway revolutionary archduke and Darwin and Queen Victoria playing imperial monopoly… DW Griffith meets Cecil B DeMille. Ariane Mnouchkine’s work has rarely been seen in the UK because of its scale and complexity over four hours. Lowland Hall, Royal Highland Centre, Ingliston, 6pm, £30-£35, eiff.co.uk/folespoir, 0131-473 2000

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• TALK: Liz Lochhead. The Scots Makar, poet and playwright talks to Robyn Marsack, director of the Scottish Poetry Library, about her work and its connections with myth and fairytales from Scottish and European traditions. The Hub, 2.30pm, £6 (£3 concs), eif.co.uk, 0131-473 2000

• TALK: Ian Bostridge. The internationally celebrated English tenor discusses his recent collection of essays on music, A Singer’s Notebook, with Sir John Tusa, cultural commentator and former managing director of London’s Barbican. The Hub, 5pm, £6 (£3 concs), eif.co.uk, 0131-473 2000

• MUSIC: Francesco Piemontesi. The gifted young Swiss pianist Francesco Piemontesi is one of the piano world’s rising stars. The Queen’s Hall, Clerk Street, 11am, £8–£29, 0131-668 2019

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