It doesn't fit comfortably when the conductor tells us we are to have an unprogrammed starter instead of an encore, assuming we deemed an encore appropriate, and didn't tell an almost full Usher Hall what they were to play - assuming we all knew it was Dvořák's Carnival Overture. But Yannick Nézet-Séguin is full of life and nobody would want it otherwise. He had brought his Philadelphia Orchestra for a residency at this Year's Edinburgh Festival before they flew off to Germany and France and then to the Proms in London.
Originally planned for Beethoven's Ninth Symphony, a last minute altercation about whether the Edinburgh Festival Chorus would be wearing masks had led to a change in the programme to Beethoven's Fifth Symphony - in which the singers were not required. So after the Dvořák we heard Rachmaninov's Isle of the Dead. Beethoven's Fifth starts with extraordinarily familiar four notes which are repeated throughout the work. As it ended several players came and joined their colleagues which seemed strange. But the conductor, quite fairly, wanted us to hear Silvestrov's Prayer for Ukraine. A mixed bag of content in an odd shape, but a good concert all the same.
Event: Thursday 25th August 2022 at 8 pm