Previews: EIF Music

Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra

Acclaimed as one of the top symphony orchestras in the world, the Netherlands' Royal Concertgebouw returns to the Usher Hall this August.

A programme of modern music is set for their first concert, including Stravinsky’s Symphonies of Wind Instruments, drawing on Russian folk elements, and his Firebird suite, composed in the dawning of a new world in 1945. Expect a musical dialogue between the works of composers living in a time of great change.

Combining their talent with the Edinburgh Festival Chorus and the Royal Scottish National Orchestra Junior Chorus to give us Mahler’s Symphony No. 3 in their second performance this August, Royal Concertgebouw are set to do justice to one of the most exceptional symphonies in the repertoire.

BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra

A clutch of Scotland's musical talent will unite under the leadership of Donald Runnicles to perform another of Mahler’s symphonies in the Usher Hall this August: the 8th, which the composer himself called his “Symphony of a Thousand" because of the stupendous ensemble it requires.

The Edinburgh Festival Chorus, Royal Scottish National Orchestra Junior Chorus, and a stellar line up of soloists come together to perform this majestic piece.

Choosing to perform it with the Edinburgh Festival Chorus when he returned home to Edinburgh in the early 1990's for his International Festival debut—having sung it with the RSNO Junior Chorus as a boy—the symphony is a work close to Runnicles's heart. The question is what new resonances will this piece of music take on in the new world of the 21st century?

Jonathan Biss

Heralded by BBC Music Magazine as “no ordinary pianist... an exceptional talent”, the International Festival debut of this young American virtuoso is to be eagerly anticipated.

Opening the Queen's Hall series with five lyrical pieces by Leon Kirchner—originally songs set to poems by Emily Dickinson—Biss can be expected to produce a performance of masterful control and sensitivity.

From Schumann's Kreisleriana and Mozart’s Adagio in B minor to Beethoven’s Appassionata Piano Sonata, Biss will provide a showcase indeed – traversing the tender to find the fire in his International Festival debut.