Page 200 - FINAL_The Sixteen Coverage Book 40th Anniversary Year

the arts desk

19 August 2019

Edinburgh International Festival 2019:

MacMillan birthday concerts - searing world

premiere

Triumphant new choral symphony for our rudderless times

James MacMillan conducting his Second SymphonyAll concert images by Ryan Buchanan

To celebrate the 60th birthday of Sir James MacMillan, the Edinburgh International Festival has
programmed his music over five concerts, including the Nash Ensemble with Fourteen Little
Pictures, the National Youth Choir of Scotland with All the Hills and Vales Along, and the Royal
Scottish National Orchestra and the Festival Chorus with the cantata Quickening. But the festival’s
most unequivocal endorsement of Scotland’s leading composer came on Saturday evening in the
Usher Hall, with four large-scale works, including a major world premiere, performed over two
concerts in the late afternoon and evening.

It’s something of a gamble, even in the febrile atmosphere of a festival, to programme a contemporary composer quite so
exclusively, but for Edinburgh it was handsomely vindicated – while the earlier concert at 5pm drew a respectable house, the
later performance was packed to the rafters with an audience keen to hear the first ever performance of Le grand Inconnu,
MacMillan’s Fifth Symphony, an epic choral meditation on the Holy Spirit (★★★★★).

And were they pleased with what they witnessed? You bet. Seldom if ever have I seen the Usher Hall audience, staid at the
best of times, rise to its feet to cheer the composer of a new work with such heartfelt enthusiasm. This was music whose
dramatic poise and deep poignancy reflects MacMillan’s stature as a figure of cultural and national importance, and not just
in Scotland. Is it too much to suggest that in the increasing moral and political vacuum of our affairs of state, we heard in this
music the triumphant reassertion of the values of love, tolerance, and hope?

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