Even with stripped back programme festival still lauded as success - John McLellan

Sir Simon Rattle

Another Festival season is almost over, and even with a more stripped back programme and the lack of King’s Theatre, this year’s International Festival is being lauded as a success.

Even just the little recorded message from new director Nicola Benedetti at the start of each performance to put your phone away signalled things would be different this year.

Not everyone’s mug of Assam, but even for the relatively uninitiated like me, Olivier Messiaen’s Turangalila from the London Symphony Orchestra under Sir Simon Rattle for the last time was as staggering an orchestral performance as you’re likely to hear. Unmatchable precision, a wall of sound to make Phil Spector recordings seem like penny whistles, and it’s not often you see a virtuoso pianist like Peter Donohoe bashing a concert grand with his fists.

For sheer swivel-hipped camp swagger Gabriel Schneider as Macheath “Mack the Knife” in the Berliner Ensemble’s production of The Threepenny Opera at the Festival Theatre was a high point. On a much smaller scale, so too was the wonderfully quirky Dimanche by Belgian mime and puppetry companies Focus and Chaliwaté at the Church Hill Theatre.

The latter’s strong message about climate change is particularly relevant when set in the context of ridiculous criticism of Edinburgh fund manager Baillie Gifford’s sponsorship of both the International and Book Festivals because two per cent of their investments are in companies linked to fossil fuel.

And if it’s not fossil fuel, it would be some other pretext. No sponsors, no festivals, no messages. But lots of ignorance.