EIF music reviews: First Night at the Hub | NYO of the USA | Beth Taylor & Hamish Brown
This trio of EIF events showcased orchestral excellence and superb singing
First Night at The Hub, The Hub ★★★★★
First Night at the Hub is a unique event with an intimate magic conjured up by International Festival director Nicola Benedetti. Warm, charming and gracious, she was a natural compère and host.
That’s in addition, of course, to playing her violin in everything from Shostakovich to a phenomenal bluesy solo Strathspey arrangement by Wynton Marsalis, and joining up-and-coming all-female folk group Dàna.
Other friends invited along just happened to be some of the world’s best performers, in town for more formal EIF concerts, but happy to let their hair down a bit. Pianist Kirill Gerstein and conductor Karina Canellakis hot-footed it from the Usher Hall, with Canellakis swapping her baton for American bluesy violin in Ravel.
Filmmaker Ken Burns reminded us of the Scottish Enlightenment and its links to American independence, while the Jason Max Ferdinand Singers brought more of their astounding choral sound, first heard at the Queen’s Hall in the morning. Carol Main
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National Youth Orchestra of the USA, Usher Hall ★★★★★
Probably the most visually striking orchestra to appear on the Usher Hall platform as part of this year’s EIF, the uniformly bright red-trousered and dark-jacketed players of the NYO of the USA were just as consistently striking musically.
The last stop on their summer 2026 European tour, Edinburgh proved a triumphant finale for this outstandingly talented ensemble of 16- to 19-year-olds and conductor Karina Canellakis, who all come together under the banner of Carnegie Hall’s Weill Music Institute.
Opening with Samuel Barber’s Overture To The School For Scandal characterised what was to come as pulsating energy brought ongoing momentum, with Canellakis’s direction in polished phrasing driving the music forward with light and breezy airiness.
The dress code included Converse All Star trainers across the orchestra, and soloist Kirill Gerstein came on stage wearing the same footwear for Gershwin’s Piano Concerto in F. A piece that’s influenced by both jazz and classical, Gerstein struck the right balance in its tension of laidback understatement and virtuosic edginess.
Whether the highly impressive soloists in the winds, thrilling brass fanfares, expansive violins or hushed lower strings, the full orchestra plays with an exuberance that was just right for Bartók’s Concerto for Orchestra, especially in the brisk, taut pacing set by Canellakis. Absorbing and appropriately dramatic, it was a showpiece for what the NYO of the USA are capable of.
It’s not often – if ever – that a conductor picks up their violin for an encore but that’s what Canellakis did, with Gerstein her duo partner in the second movement of Ravel’s Violin Sonata No 2, a piece aptly influenced by Gershwin, jazz and blues. Carol Main
Beth Taylor & Hamish Brown, Queen’s Hall ★★★★★
There was clear direction of travel to Scots mezzo soprano Beth Taylor’s EIF debut recital, its spectacular destination being the brutal histrionics of Stuart MacRae’s song cycle Medusa, written for Taylor and receiving its world premiere.
MacRae’s waspish writing in its narrative clarity proved the perfect showpiece for Taylor’s limitless vocal and dramatic versatility, a performance as viperish and cataclysmic as it was introspective and haunting. Add to that the imaginative pianism of Hamish Brown, fearlessly responsive, vigorously probing.
Taking us to this point was a curious mix of songs described collectively as “the manifold voices of women through the ages”, opening theatrically with a 12th century antiphon by Hildegard von Bingen.
Then came the gorgeous impressionistic nuances of Augusta Holmes, the rippling composure of Lili Boulanger, and an enchanting arrangement of The Grey Selkie o’ Sule Skerry. Following was Romantic Lieder by Clara Schumann and Fanny Hensel, and Connie Converse. Then Germaine Tailleferre’s whimsical grotesquerie fed adroitly into the MacRae. Ken Walton
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