EDINBURGH - From the whirlwind of six simultaneous festivals
(International, Fringe, Film, Books, Jazz, Tattoo), only a few
experiences stand out with clarity:  the good and the bad; everything
else is just a blur in-between.

The classics are brilliantly served.  In the Queen's Hall Bank of
Scotland Series, Christian Tetzlaff led cellist Tanja Tetzlaff and
harpsichordist Robert Hill in a performance of the six Bach sonatas "for
concerted harpsichord," and in Usher Hall, Charles Mackerras presided over
"Gran Partita," Mozart's Serenade in B flat for 13 Wind Instruments.

The latter is part of the important new series of late-night concerts,
underwritten by the Royal Bank, all seats priced for the equivalent of
just over $7.  Other events in the series this week:  Tetzlaff, again,
playing Bach; John Adams' "Harmonium," David Jones conducting the BBC
Scottish Symphony; the fabulous Belcea Quartet playing Beethoven; Carles
Santos, with the world premiere of "No To No," and - this one I hate to
miss - accordionists James Crabb and Geir Draugsvoll performing the entire
Stravinsky "Petrushka" AND Mussorgsky's "Pictures at an Exhibition," using
Crabb's arrangement for accordions, Maurice Ravel, eat your heart out!
(And no jokes please about what the encore will be.)

***

Tetzlaff's Bach is special - a warm, colorful interpretation, far from
the "official," rigid sound and yet precise, accurate.  Balanced by Hall's
more conservative approach, the Tetzlaffs explore Bach's more romantic,
passionate aspects.  Adagios are broad, Allegros lively-to-brisk, the only
two Andantes in the set dreamy.  There is an interesting juxtaposition in
the program notes:  the notice of two concerts by the Chamber Orchestra of
Europe, with Andras Schiff.  Each concert is bracketed by a Bach Suite,
with a small work by Janacek and a large one by Schumann, Schiff playing
the piano solo as well as conducting.

Against the fascinating, diverse programs of those concerts stood the
all-Bach Tetzlaff recital - with just as much variety.  The sonatas
themselves are tremendously varied, even from movement to movement, but
the violinist made them even more "suspenseful," with his lively approach,
which had the feel of improvisation.

***

Mackerras had a wonderful time with the Mozart, and so did the audience,
leaving all the heavy lifting to the 12 virtuoso wind and brass players
of the Scottish Chamber Orchestra (a double bass was the only string
instrument, substituting for the double bassoon, for whatever reason).
It's not as if the musicians were suffering visibly, but clearly the
requirements of 50 minutes of virtuoso playing impose a heavy burden on
them.  They came through it flawlessly - meaning without a blown note,
and never letting the seams show.  (I wonder though how wind players
ever managed before the invention of bottled water.)

Oboist Robin Williams and clarinetist Maximiliano Martin and bassoonist
Ursula Leveaux are especially awesome players, but they stayed with the
ensemble every step of the way.  The over-all performance was vintage
Mackerras:  straightforward, simple, unaffected, charming, un-coy.  The
seven substantial movements (running nearly an hour) unfolded with the
kind of joyous inevitability that's at the heart of Mozart well played.

***

Now for the bad news:  "innovation" is still the favorite guise of the
untalented, the clueless.  There is so much talk at the festival about
French choreographer and elderly enfant terrible Boris Charmatz that I
decided to make up for my lamentable lack of knowledge.  When I arrived
at the performance of his "heatre-elevision," at one side of the Hub (the
glorious old church that serves as festival headquarters), hundreds queued
for tickets of the day's events, and where I ended up, there was only a
solitary usher.

"Here is THE audience," I quipped cleverly and was somewhat taken back
when the usher successfully fought the urge to laugh or, at least, smile.
Yes, he said, please come this way.  Into the church's high-ceilinged
library we marched, and when I mentioned the singularity of audience again,
he pointed to the ticket - whose small print I did not read - and the
explanation there:  "this is a pseudo-performance for an audience of one."
In retrospect, I wish I turned myself into a pseudo-audience.

Instead, I followed directions and laid down on the thick plastic
cover over a piano (it might have been a pseudo-piano), a TV screen at an
uncomfortable angle near my head, stereo speakers uncomfortably close to my
ears.  Given a hospital-type alarm button to push "in case you don't feel
well," I began my journey through Charmatz's mind.  Fighting the temptation
to use the button, I spent 50 minutes with possibly the most idiotic waste
of time I (a weary veteran of "performance art") have experienced.

The tape being shown had a bunch of rather unattractive people in leotards
jumping around, imitating monkeys.  For 50 minutes.  Most of them had their
tongues hanging out and there was a very pregnant woman sitting among them,
looking morose.

What was this then? Reading Charmatz' notes much too late, I came
to realize that "it is a kind of decoction, perhaps a suicide of live
performance:  what will be left of the smell of the work of the dancers
after the anaesthesia of the screen and the pixels?" The gentleman asking
the question is regarded as a significant creator of contemporary dance.

***

There was another "smell of work" the same evening, when the huge
Moscow Radio Tchaikovsky Symphony Orchestra gave a concert in Usher Hall,
complete with nine (9) double basses.  Conducted by Vladimir Fedoseyev, the
Tchaikovsky "Romeo and Juliet" concert overture, the Violin Concerto and
the Shostakovich Symphony No.  10 went by, giving out a constant aroma of
perspiration.  Except for the work of the fine soloist, Dmitry Sitkovetsky,
everything showed effort, determination, in a kind of old-fashioned, stodgy
music-making.  The contrast with Mackerras' Mozart concert (which followed
the tardy Russians, who stayed a half an hour beyond their assigned time)
was significant.  On the one hand, a 100-piece orchestra is working as hard
as they know how, on the other, 13 musicians - while hitting their water
bottles regularly - play so that none of their effort is audible in the
music.  Less was a great deal more in Usher Hall, Scots outplaying Big
Russian Orchestra easily.

Janos Gereben/SF
In Merry Old, to 9/1
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