| Date and venue | Title |
|---|---|
| 17-May-2013 Usher Hall | Sir Andrew Davis and RSNO in Mendelssohn's oratorio Elijah |
 RSNO concerts begin, for me and around 100 others, with the pre-concert talk. I'm especially glad of these when new to a work, such as Mendelssohn’s 1846 Elijah. A talk by those who have prepared the music for us adds something to even the most extensive “presearch”. Sir Andrew Davis, in conversation with RSNO principal trombonist Dávur Juul Magnussen, came across as extremely witty and erudite. One topic of interest was the decision to sing in German a work whose Birmingham première was sung in English.Read full review... | |
| 15-May-2013 Queen's Hall, Edinburgh | Edinburgh Quartet play Haydn, Britten and Tchaikovsky at the Queen's Hall |
 Inclement weather stalks the Edinburgh Quartet; at least, those concerts which I’ve attended in the past few months. On cue the early evening heavens opened unstintingly. By the time the concert approached it had “faired”, as the Scots sometimes say, but perhaps disinclination to venture out had been irreversibly embraced by some. That’s not to say that the attendance was poor. The central stalls were pretty full; less so the posture-punishing pews which frame the Queen’s Hall’s wooden horseshoe.Read full review... | |
| 27-Apr-2013 Queen's Hall, Edinburgh | Scottish Chamber Orchestra and George Benjamin celebrate Britten |
 This second of two SCO Britten centenary concerts saw its subject juxtaposed with two living British composers and Mozart. Cynics might consider the closing Symphony no. 40 in G minor (1788) a reward for surviving the rest of the programme’s modernity. However, the audience of sophisticated, paying volunteers, such as I felt to be present, would be more likely to detect in it a parallel with our own, home-grown, prolific child prodigy, Benjamin Britten.Read full review... | |
| 26-Apr-2013 Usher Hall | A second American Festival with the RSNO |
 It’s rare to see a soloist perform two concertos in a single programme. RSNO Associate Leader William Chandler promised, in his highly entertaining and informative pre-concert talk, that we were in for some very exciting playing from pianist Xiayin Wang. Indeed we were.
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| 18-Apr-2013 Queen's Hall, Edinburgh | Scottish Chamber Orchestra celebrate Britten with Purcell |
 Endeavouring to travel lightly through the world, I tend not to collect programme notes. However, such was the quality of Jo Kirkbride’s notes for this SCO Britten centenary celebration that scanning them for e-posterity is tempting. They prompted a consideration of the whole idea of programming. A structured evening’s listening is an entirely different thing from an evening’s will-o’-the-wisp home listening, and it can be greatly enhanced by coherent notes from a single source.
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| 12-Apr-2013 Usher Hall | Mediterranean moods: RSNO with Gilbert Varga and Miloš Karadaglić |
.jpg) In an engaging German-Scots accent, RSNO first violinist Ursula Heidecker Allen promised the pre-concert talk audience an evening of sunny Mediterranean moods. Time being a factor in these very worthwhile 25-minute, capacity-crowd events, she addressed only the programme’s two Respighi pieces, mentioning that he was a pupil of another programmed composer, Martucci.
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| 5-Apr-2013 Reid Concert Hall | Edinburgh Contemporary Music Ensemble at the Reid Concert Hall |
 Doubling as a 300-seat lecture theatre for Edinburgh University’s Music Department, the 1859 Reid Concert Hall is an elegant performance space with deep red walls and a fine sound. On this particular evening an audience of around a couple of hundred gathered for a seven-item concert given by the Edinburgh Contemporary Music Ensemble. Founded in 2006, this orchestra comprises students from the university alongside musicians of various vintages from Edinburgh’s musical life, including Edinburgh Youth Orchestra.
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| 18-Mar-2013 Queen's Hall, Edinburgh | Brodsky Quartet spin the Wheel of 4Tunes in Edinburgh |
 The Brodsky Quartet, named for violinist Adolph Brodsky (1851–1929), formed in 1972. Two founder members remain: second violinist Ian Belton and cellist Jacqueline Thomas. 2,000 concerts and 50 recordings later, they have been celebrating their 40th anniversary year by mixing their huge repertoire with an element of chance. Enter “The Wheel of 4Tunes”. Total indeterminacy might result in a bonsai-concert of bijou items, or an all-nighter of titans, and so a little constraint was devised.Read full review... | |
| 17-Mar-2013 Queen's Hall, Edinburgh | Dunedin Consort present the St Matthew Passion at Queen's Hall, Edinburgh |
 Passion is not for the faint-hearted. This performance of Bach’s St Matthew Passion weighed in at three hours (excluding interval). However, my attention did not waver, and this seemed true of the rest of enraptured audience. When digesting Dunedin Consort director John Butt’s scholarly yet very readable programme notes beforehand, I was staggered to learn that, at just about the time our audience would be stretching its legs, the congregation at the 1727 première, would have remained seated for the pivotal part of the event: the sermon.
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| 15-Mar-2013 Usher Hall | RSNO: Lugansky plays Prokofiev in an all-Russian programme conducted by Mikhail Tatarnikov |
 Who knew glaciers were so musical? Arensky Glacier, named for the composer of this all-Russian programme’s opener, flows south from Beethoven Peninsula into the north end of the Antartic’s Boccherini Inlet. There is nothing chilly, however, about the 1894 Variations on a Theme of Tchaikovsky by Anton Arensky (1861–1906). The teacher of Scriabin and Rachmaninov, Arensky drew his theme from “Legend”, the fifth of Tchaikovsky’s 1883 Sixteen Songs for Children, Op. 54, finding sufficient inspiration there for seven variations.
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| 7-Mar-2013 Queen's Hall, Edinburgh | SCO with Matthias Goerne in orchestrated Schubert Lieder |
 Size mattered in this programme, whether in the form of piano originals filled out to orchestral proportions, or Romantic reach reined in by Classical sensibility. The evening’s opening gesture was down to one man, Ian White, whose muted trombone ushered in Webern’s orchestration of the Ricercar from Bach’s 1747 Musical Offering. This zany and delicate treatment says all that can be said about the colour that orchestration can bring to a keyboard original.Read full review... | |
| 6-Mar-2013 St Andrew's and St George's Church | Edinburgh Quartet's Rush Hour Concert: Beethoven's "Harp" Quartet |
 Formerly St Andrew’s Church, until pairing up with St George’s at the West End of the city, this Andrew Fraser building is doubly unique: it was the first elliptical church in Scotland; it has the oldest “peal of bells” in the country. Sadly silent since 2002, the bells are thought to have inspired Lady Nairne’s folk song Caller Herrin’. This Edinburgh Quartet Rush Hour Concert was the church’s first musical event since recent refurbishments, the aroma of paint from which informed the evening air.
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| 28-Feb-2013 Queen's Hall, Edinburgh | Scottish Chamber Orchestra and Adam Fischer excel in Haydn |
.jpg) Who better to direct an all-Haydn programme than Adam Fischer? Co-founder of the Haydn Festival, he also founded the Austro-Hungarian Haydn Orchestra, who recorded the composer’s entire symphonic output in Haydn Hall of the Esterházy Palace, Eisenstadt, Haydn’s former place of employment. Here the Scottish Chamber Orchestra and Fischer offered a programme of three mature Haydn works, all written within a four-year period of Haydn’s seventh decade.
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| 24-Feb-2013 St Mary's Cathedral | RSNO chamber musicians play Bartók, Beethoven and Brahms |
 Built by the prolific George Gilbert Scott (1811–78), St Mary’s Episcopal Cathedral in Glasgow was opened in 1871. Now featuring Gwyneth Leech’s striking 1990 murals, including a triptych of the Easter Passion set in nearby Kelvingrove Park, it is a frequent venue for events such as this RSNO chamber concert. From a dais placed in the crossing of this intimate cathedral setting, a string quartet (later to be augmented to clarinet quintet) enjoyed an acoustic which, save for one brief, busy moment, offered a winning mix of clarity and warmth.Read full review... | |
| 21-Feb-2013 Queen's Hall, Edinburgh | Piotr Anderszewski and Alexander Janiczek with the Scottish Chamber Orchestra |
 This creative SCO programme offered two works in either half, performed in reverse chronological order. Virtuoso violinist Alexander Janiczek directed the first of each pair, beginning with Schubert’s 1817 Overture in D major “In the Italian Style”, D.590. Conrad Wilson, whose supplied fine programme notes for the entire concert, described the work as Schubert’s response to a “Rossini frenzy that swept Vienna in 1816”. Taking this as a test case, the Italianising of Teutonic works seems to amount to a lightening of touch.Read full review... | |
| 20-Feb-2013 Greyfriars Kirk | Pergolesi and Bingham with Red Note and JAM |
 Patrick DouglasHamilton 300dpiLARGE.jpg) Many composers would be delighted to be sharing the bill with Pergolesi, particularly if the ratio of programmed pieces were 2:1 in their favour. Judith Bingham combined composing and singing careers for many years, but she now concentrates solely on composing. However, she does – as she confessed in a YouTube interview – compose unconsciously in “breath lengths”. I had not heard this confession before attending the concert but was aware of a natural feel to the music.
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| 15-Feb-2013 Usher Hall | RSNO: Valentine's Night with Christian Kluxen and Olga Kern |
 The contention that black and white are not colours felt doubtful upon seeing the customary RSNO white tie and black tails reversed; the truly colourful array of dresses offsetting white tuxedos allowed one to see, more easily than usual, the gender balance of the RSNO – which, in this Valentine’s concert, seemed about 50–50.
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| 8-Feb-2013 Usher Hall | An American festival with the RSNO |
 As a teenager, I recall feeling how American classical music differed from European; its harmonies seemed as wide open as the plains depicted on film; its rhythmic freedom grabbed me viscerally. The same feeling obtains many years later and certainly did in this RSNO programme. The fact that two of these most American pieces were penned by the children of Ukranian Jewish immigrants says much about the musical culture of a relatively young America.
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| 26-Jan-2013 Queen's Hall, Edinburgh | SCO: The Romantic Century – Mendelssohn, Schumann, Martinsson, Beethoven |
 What better start to a near capacity crowd concert than Mendelssohn's rousing Overture in C Major, Op101. It contains everything required to suggest a promising evening's music: pace, sparkling orchestration, energising counterpoint, dramatic dynamics and panache. The SCO used Christopher Hogwood's modern Urtext edition of this piece which, written in 1826 and revised in 1833, remained unpublished at the composer's death. The orchestration struck me particularly when, about two thirds of the way through, there is short and punchy section highlighting the woodwind section.Read full review... | |
| 25-Jan-2013 Usher Hall | RSNO: Borisova-Ollas, Schumann & Dvořák |
 RSNO cellist Peter Hunt's pre-concert talk began with a reading from Salman Rushhdie's novel, The Ground Beneath Her Feet. This reworking of the myth of Orpheus and Eurydice, was the inspiration for Open Ground by Russian-born (now Sweden-based) composer Victoria Borisova-Ollas. The novel's principal character, Vina Aspara, is caught up in an earthquake in Mexico. The complete work, a staged performance for orchestra, singers and narrator, also contains rock trio and harp. The 2006 première featured a film directed by Mike Figgis.
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| 18-Jan-2013 Teviot Lounge Bar | Edinburgh Quartet's Late Session: Erskine, Osborne, Britten and Purcell |
JohnNeedPhotography-3.jpg) The raison d’être of the Edinburgh Quartet’s “Late Sessions” is to take string quartet repertoire to those who might not yet consider a formal concert the ideal evening out.
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| 21-Dec-2012 Summerhall | Red Note Ensemble: The End of the World (for one night only) |
| It was the hottest ticket in town. An limited audience of 100 convened for The End of the World (for one night only). The venue which I had mistakenly perceived as a single building turned out to be more of a small village. Summerhall was, from 1916 to 2011, the home of the Royal (Dick) School of Veterinary Studies, known to locals as the Dick Vet. Evidence of this previous life obtained as we were promenaded through the compound for this theatre and music event. Read full review... | |
| 19-Dec-2012 St Giles Cathedral | Red Note Ensemble: Hymn of Thanks (Transcendence) |
 St Giles’ Cathedral, at the top of Edinburgh’s Royal Mile, boasts a wonderful acoustic. From the chancel of this magnificent building a string quartet, drawn from the Red Note Ensemble’s flexible and varied forces, presented a late-evening, candlelit programme of meditative music entitled, Hymn of Thanks (Transcendence).Read full review... | |
| 14-Dec-2012 Queen's Hall, Edinburgh | Ludus Baroque perform J.S. Bach's Christmas Oratorio in Edinburgh |
 In brief introductory remarks, founder and director of Ludus Baroque Richard Neville-Towle outlined three significant features of the performance. The indicated presence of a crib signified that this was to be a devotional performance, and being able to make sense of this is possibly what divides the faithful from the faithless. A move from the home turf of the Canongate Kirk to the larger acoustic of the Queen’s Hall had been undertaken to highlight increased interplay between orchestra and singers.Read full review... | |
| 12-Dec-2012 St George's West Church | Edinburgh Quartet's Rush Hour Concert: Shostakovich, Schnittke, Blumenfeld |
JohnNeedPhotography-1.jpg) Edinburgh’s 1869 church of St George’s West is a fine example of the prolific output of local architect David Bryce (1803–76). On this particularly chilly evening (inside and out), it hosted an Edinburgh Quartet “Rush Hour Concert” which featured an interesting take on format and programming.
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| 6-Dec-2012 Queen's Hall, Edinburgh | SCO and Storgårds in Rautavaara, Beethoven and Mendelssohn |
 Finland’s Einojuhani Rautavaara is no stranger to the SCO, who premièred his Autumn Gardens in 1999; nor to this concert’s conductor, fellow Finn John Storgårds, who recorded a disc of his works earlier this year. Although not a world première, this was a UK first performance of his Into the Heart of Light for string orchestra. Even in the years when he embraced serialism Rautavaara somehow managed to incorporate its key-avoiding nature into an essentially romantic tonal language.Read full review... | |
| 25-Nov-2012 Symposium Hall | Simon Thacker's Svara-Kanti in Edinburgh |
 Symposium Hall is a new 158-seat church conversion venue in Edinburgh’s attractive Hill Square. Its mix of tradition and newness made a fitting venue for the final date in Svara-Kanti’s UK tour. Encoded in the name (svara = sound/notes and kanti = beauty) is the group’s raison d’être; the new territory to be found in the marriage of Indian and Western instruments and traditions. Led by classical guitarist and tireless seeker Simon Thacker, the group presented a programme of commissions, arrangements and original compositions.
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| 23-Nov-2012 Usher Hall | RSNO: Prokofiev, Mozart and Strauss with Kazushi Ono and Saleem Abboud Ashkar |
 “Cinderella” and “ballet” might ordinarily suggest glockenspiel-topped delicacy; not in Prokofiev’s case. His ballet Cinderella, and the selection from it chosen by the RSNO, contains great variety. The Introduction’s darkness hints at the exploitation and neglect which are to be vanquished by love and happiness. Prokofiev’s stated aim to write a ballet which was “as danceable as possible” did not rule out the burlesque.Read full review... | |
| 22-Nov-2012 Traverse Theatre | Red Note Ensemble: The Intoxicating Rose Garden |
 In her short introductory remarks at the evening’s outset, Sally Beamish referenced Oscar Wilde’s The Nightingale and the Rose, wherein in the redness of a rose is secured by a nightingale’s pierced heart. The 14th-century poet Hafez, around whose works this multimedia event was constructed, hailed from the Persian (Iranian) city of Shiraz, nicknamed “City of roses” and “City of flower and nightingale”.
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| 17-Nov-2012 Canongate Kirk | Calton Consort: Translated Daughters |
 From the altar of their customary home in Edinburgh’s 1691 Canongate Kirk, Calton Consort presented an a cappella concert enigmatically entitled “Translated Daughters”. The enigma dissolved upon hearing W.H. Auden’s text for Britten’s Hymn to St Cecilia. It features the arresting couplet: “Translated Daughter, come down and startle / Composing mortals with immortal fire.” As though the transmission of musical inspiration from Heaven to Earth were not difficult enough, Britten experienced his own earthbound obstacles.Read full review... | |
| 16-Nov-2012 Usher Hall | RSNO Naked Classics: Berlioz's Symphonie fantastique |
 The RSNO’s Naked Classics series continues to draw sizeable crowds, and it’s not difficult to see why. A single work is dissected and then, after the interval, performed. Admirably, even the analytical first half opens with music; a passage from the piece at hand is played before the presenter takes the stage.
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| 15-Nov-2012 The Jam House | Hebrides Ensemble: Eight Songs for a Mad King |
 The Jam House is a jazz and blues club occupying the BBC’s former Queen Street Studios in Edinburgh. Now owned by Jools Holland and designer Neil Tabbitt, its spacious Georgian interior is occasionally given over to theatrical and musical events. Peter Maxwell Davies’ Eight Songs for a Mad King (1969) qualifies as both music and theatre, and this production, which was directed by Ben Twist, designed by Fiona Watt and lit by Martin Palmer, was certainly theatrical.
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| 4-Nov-2012 Edinburgh Playhouse | RSNO play music from Final Fantasy |
 Coincidence can add resonance to timing. The day after enjoying BBC Radio 3’s Free Thinking discussion about the relevance and future of live classical music, I found myself at just the sort of event that could have informed the debate. The audience was, in the main, very young and comprised: portly, indoor boys with little evidence of recent brisk walks; nattily dressed, imaginatively coiffured couples; and people in costume, including one young man in articulated, plastic armour and a long blonde wig. What could possibly have occasioned such a gathering?
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| 26-Oct-2012 Usher Hall | RSNO with Søndergård in Andersson, Mahler and Sibelius |
 The pre-concert talk is a firm favourite with many RSNO regulars. Situated in what feels like an impromptu chapel near the Upper Circle Bar, this 25-minute exploration attracts a congregation which spills well beyond the hundred or so seats laid out. Soon to rejoin the ranks of the first violins, Ursula Heideker Allen interviewed two of the evening’s key figures: RSNO Principal Guest Conductor Thomas Søndergård, and the composer of the opening piece, B. Tommy Andersson.Read full review... | |
| 12-Oct-2012 Usher Hall | RSNO with Oundjian: Britten, Rachmaninov and Brahms |
 Although the Usher Hall was slightly less packed than for the inaugural concert of the season, there was a healthy crowd. If two concerts is sufficient to gauge an emerging format then Music Director Peter Oundjian’s preferred style seems to be to save welcoming remarks until after the opening piece, at which point he talks us through the evening as a whole.
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| 7-Oct-2012 Usher Hall | St Petersburg Symphony Orchestra play Rachmaninov and Shostakovich in Edinburgh |
 A neighbour at a recent visiting orchestra’s Edinburgh Festival concert asked me what I thought of the atonal frenzy in the pre-performance free-for-all; warm-up scales mingled with sneak peeks at tricky passages. My response was that a school orchestra would not be allowed to do this. Contrastingly, the vista before this St Petersburg Symphony Orchestra’s Usher Hall concert consisted of an unpeopled stage. The orchestra filed on in a matter of seconds. Coupled with white tie and tails appearance, this may have struck some as overly formal.Read full review... | |
| 5-Oct-2012 Usher Hall | Peter Oundjian launches his directorship of RSNO with Glinka, Tchaikovsky and Shostakovich |
.jpg) If the presence of BBC Radio 3 and a huge audience occasioned any nervousness on the evening of Peter Oundjian’s first Edinburgh appearance as RSNO Music Director, it was well hidden. Weaving with boyish enthusiasm through the orchestra, a sporting spring in his step, he acknowledged the warm welcome before the orchestra dived into Glinka’s 1842 overture to Ruslan and Ludmilla.
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| 23-Sep-2012 St Mary's Parish Church | Lammermuir Festival: Fauré Requiem with Northern Sinfonia and NYCOS |
 If three years is sufficient to constitute a tradition then, traditionally, a Lammermuir Festival ends with a sell-out concert in St. Mary’s Parish Church, Haddington. And if year three is sufficiently far along the line to break with tradition, then this year’s surprise was not box-office focused but based on choice of repertoire; not a Bach/Handel finish, but an all-French programme.
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| 21-Sep-2012 St Mary's Parish Church | Lammermuir Festival: Haydn by candlelight |
 Stars of Lammermuir’s 2011 Musical Journey, the Navarra Quartet returned for two 2012 dates. The first of their engagements featured a single Haydn work: The Seven Last Words of Christ on the Cross (1787).
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| 16-Sep-2012 St Michael's Kirk | Lammermuir Festival: Master and Commander |
 The Lammermuir Festival has a proven track record of experimentation; venues and works frequently surprise, and this year has seen some branching out in the format of events.
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| 15-Sep-2012 Dunbar Parish Church | Lammermuir Festival: Scottish Chamber Orchestra in Ravel, Rodrigo and Mozart |
 Picture the scene: Dunbar Parish Church nearing the end of major renovation. Looking heavenward, one sees two RSJ-type structures which appear to have facilitated the removal of all impediments to vision and light, the latter refracted through stained glass windows. In one corner of of the resulting square, facing the opposite corner, sit the Scottish Chamber Orchestra. The audience form a broad L-shape around them.
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| 15-Sep-2012 St Anne's Episcopal Church | Lammermuir Festival: Maxwell String Quartet and guitarist Allan Neave |
 There’s nothing like a festival coming to your neighbourhood to highlight gaps in local knowledge. Despite having grown up 12 miles from Dunbar, I’d never spotted, far less entered, St Anne’s Episcopal Church. It is a gem of a place with a superb chamber music acoustic. The separation and blend of instruments heard there would require a hi-fi several hundred times the price of a ticket for this live performance.
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| 14-Sep-2012 St Mary's Parish Church | Lammermuir Festival: Dunedin Consort's St John Passion |
 The motto of the Lammermuir Festival, now in its third year, is “beautiful music in beautiful places”. Few settings are more striking than St Mary’s Parish Church in Haddington. The scene of John Knox’s ordination as a Catholic priest, some years before he lit the blue touch-paper of Scottish Reformation, it seemed a resonant setting for one of musical history’s Lutheran landmarks: Bach’s St John Passion.
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| 1-Sep-2012 Usher Hall | Edinburgh International Festival: RSNO play Ives, Feldman and Walton with David Robertson |
 This, the final indoor concert of the 2012 Edinburgh International Festival (the closing Fireworks Concert takes place under the Castle Rock in Princes Street Gardens), was bookended by possibly the loudest and quietest sounds in the festival.
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| 1-Sep-2012 Queen's Hall, Edinburgh | Emerson String Quartet in Edinburgh play Mozart, Adès and Beethoven |
 This festival's final morning recital boasted very minimal staging: one chair and four music stands. Sitting, for the last time in Edinburgh as a member of the Emerson Quartet, would be cellist David Finckel. Eschewing seats is not the only unusual element in the Emerson String Quartet; they also shun the traditional power structure of fixed first and second violin: Eugene Drucker and Philip Stetzer share leadership.
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| 31-Aug-2012 Usher Hall | Scottish Chamber Orchestra in Edinburgh play Mahler, Tchaikovsky and Shostakovich |
 'First impressions are often the truest', wrote Hazlitt. I was immediately struck by the amount of space on the Usher Hall stage, recently filled by so many large symphony orchestras. The Scottish Chamber Orchestra had plenty of space, a feature which was soon to be borne out in the music.
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| 22-Aug-2012 Usher Hall | Cleveland Orchestra 02 - Smetana, Lutosławski and Shostakovich |
 The items in the Cleveland Orchestra's second programme shared one feature; unusual form with regard to the number of movements. Having played the first four movements of Smetana's Má Vlast the previous evening, here they presented the remaining two. And although the playing was commendable, with warmth, clarity and impressive use of dynamics, little of the notion of terror or violence came across. Students of composition could certainly learn how easily dated the extensive use of diminished chords can sound, when employed in the hope of drama.Read full review... | |
| 22-Aug-2012 Greyfriars Kirk | World première of James MacMillan's Since it was the Day of Preparation... |
 At one extreme of musical preparation, early music specialists rely on research to ensure authentic performance of music by composers long dead. At the other, composers writing today might well be acquainted with the performers and consult them on the technical possibility of some passages and attend rehearsals. This is likely to have been the case for James MacMillan's Since it was the Day of Preparation... whose world première took place in Edinburgh's historic Greyfriars Kirk.
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| 21-Aug-2012 Usher Hall | Cleveland Orchestra 01 - Lutosławski & Smetana |
 The Cleveland Orchestra's two Slavic programmes form part of a larger Polish thread woven into this year's EIF. Witold Lutosławski's 1954 Concerto for Orchestra struck me as an ideal opening to the first concert. Its reliance on folk tunes, collected from the Masovia region (north of Warsaw) by ethnographer Oskar Kolberg, assures an unmistakably Polish flavour. Lutosławski seemed to regard these folk melodies as sufficiently robust in rhythm and implied harmony to withstand substantial opposition from what he called 'non-tonal chromatic counterpoints and harmonies'.Read full review... | |
| 3-Aug-2012 Queen's Hall, Edinburgh | Mr. McFall's Chamber play Baltic Music |
 In Scotland, where the word 'Baltic' functions as a colloquial substitute for 'extremely cold', it's odd to come across a programme on this theme in August. Fans of the ensemble Mr. McFall's Chamber delight in such idiosyncrasies and would not be thrown to find an embrace of tangos at the programme's heart. That there were Finnish tangos might be a surprise. The eponymous Robert McFall had been introduced to Finnish tango by the late musicologist, writer and broadcaster Jan Fairley, to whose memory the concert was dedicated.
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