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& Museum, Argyle Street, 276 9599. 3–3.45pm. Sunday promenade concerts. FREE Orchestra Choral Evensong St Mary’s Episcopal Cathedral, 300 Great Western Road, 337 2862. 6.30pm. St Mary’s Cathedral Festival Chorus and St Mary’s Festival Orchestra celebrate a choral evensong with sacred music, including Stanford’s Evening Service in A. Part of the West End Festival. FREE Songs of Praise Kelvinside Hillhead Parish Church, Observatory Road, 334 2788. 7pm. A chance to sing some favourite hymns, with accompaniment from the church’s famous Willis organ. Part of the West End Festival. Junior Conservatoire Symphony Orchestra Royal Conservatoire of Scotland, 100 Renfrew Street, 332 5057. 7.30pm. £10.50 (£7.50). Student concert conducted by David Danzmayr.
OLYMPIC CONCERT KRONOS QUARTET: SUN RINGS Riverside Museum, Glasgow, Sun 15 Jul
As London gears up for the Olympics, Scots may feel a million miles away from any sporting events, but culture is another matter. As part of the London 2012 festival celebrations, Glasgow Music is programming what promises to be one of the most spectacular events of the whole shebang. Forget the symbolic Olympic rings and in their place put Sun Rings. In Terry Riley’s music of that name, NASA’s astonishing images of deep space, solar explosions, stars as never seen before and close-ups of planets provide a remarkable video background for the Kronos Quartet’s one-off performance at Glasgow’s Riverside. Inspired by Riley’s discovery that there is sound in space, and that NASA has recordings to prove it, Sun Rings is the result of his work with Kronos and visual designer Willie Williams. ‘It is amazing,’ says Svend Brown, Director of Glasgow Music. ‘NASA has a programme to encourage the arts to demystify what they do and the Kronos were resident there a few years back as part of that. They were the real catalyst for the piece and Riley’s sheer excitement of finding electronic impulse in space and the huge bursts of energy from the sun.’
Bringing to mind Holst’s orchestral suite, The Planets, Riley’s work may be smaller-scale in terms of the forces required – although it similarly does also involve a choir – but the impact is giant-sized. Connecting space through sound and string quartet, the piece is to be performed outside the new Riverside Museum. ‘It will,’ says Brown, ‘be utterly awe-inspiring. With access to NASA’s visual library, the back stage projection is really, really beautiful, often quite abstract with each image wonderfully different. It’s very American – about voyage, exploration and discovery. It’s epic.’ (Carol Main)
CLASSICAL Music
Edinburgh FREE St Giles’ at Six: St Martin’s Episcopal Church Choir St Giles’ Cathedral, Royal Mile, 226 0673. 6pm. Choral and organ music, featuring works by JS Bach, Tallis, Duruflé and others.
Monday 25
Edinburgh St Mary’s Music School Summer Concert The Queen’s Hall, 87–89 Clerk Street, 668 2019. 7.30pm. £9 (£6; schoolchildren £3). Scotland’s dedicated music school gives its summer concert with conductor Garry Walker, with pieces by Delius, Fauré, Poulenc, Bartok, Milhaud and Holst.
Tuesday 26 Glasgow Glasgow Schools Symphony Orchestra Glasgow Royal Concert Hall, 2 Sauchiehall Street, 353 8000. 7.30pm. £9 (£7). Eric Dunlea conducts young musicians in Offenbach’s La vie parisienne Overture, Smetana’s Vltava, Sibelius’ Symphony No 1 and John Maxwell Geddes, Dances at Threave.
Edinburgh Get Organised: John Kitchen Usher Hall, Lothian Road, 228 1155. 1.10pm. £3. Organ recital on the amazing Usher Hall organ.
Wednesday 27
Edinburgh FREE Very Wednesday St Giles’ Cathedral, Royal Mile, 226 0673. 12.15pm. Will Pickvance (piano) and guests play classical favourites and new material. New Tango Orquesta: Future My Love The Liquid Room, 9c Victoria Street, 225 2564. 7.30pm–1am. £10 (£5 with ticket stub from EIFF screening of Future My Love; delegates free). Launch party following the EIFF premiere of Maja Borg’s new film, Future My Love, featuring a live set from Swedish ‘nuevo tango’ band New Tango Orquesta and an after party till late. Crail Hagen Quartet I Crail Parish Church, Marketgate North, 01333 312631. 7.30pm. £17–£25. The quartet plays Beethoven’s Op 59 No 1, the first ‘Razumovsky’ quartet, and also the great late Op 132 quartet. Part of East Neuk Festival.
Thursday 28
Anstruther Hagen Quartet II Kilrenny Church, Kilrenny, 0131 473 2000. 11.30am. £12–£15. The Hagen Quartet performs early and late quartets by Beethoven, Op 18 No 6 and Op 135. Part of East Neuk Festival. Bo’ness Opera Australia: Don Giovanni The Hippodrome, 10 Hope Street, 01324 506850. 7pm. £12 (£10). See Opera Australia perform Mozart’s opera about the charismatic adventurer on the big screen.
Crail Octets I Crail Parish Church, Marketgate North, 0131 473 2000. 7.30pm. £17–£25. Schubert’s Octet is paired with Liszt’s Operatic Transcriptions, with pianist Llyr Williams and the Festival Ensemble conducted by Alexander Janiczek (violin). Part of East Neuk Festival. St Andrews Rising Star Dunino Church, Dunino, 0131 473 2000. 4pm. £12. Rising young Scottish guitarist performs music by Dowland, Bach, Rodrigo and Albeniz. Part of East Neuk Festival.
HITLIST Friday
THE BEST CLASSICAL & OPERA
BBC SSO: Listen Here! The New World Symphonies: Music from America and Beyond The BBC opens its Listen Here! weekend with a two-part concert of music inspired by America, pairing American born composers Ives and Copland with two Europeans who have particularly strong US connections, Bartok and Dvorák. City Halls, Glasgow, Fri 22 Jun.
Duo Allemand The last in Edinburgh University’s Sypert Series of Summer Concerts features top drawer early music specialists Peter Wendland and David Roblou on viola da gamba and harpsichord in music described as From Baroque to Classic. St Cecilia’s Hall, Edinburgh, Sat 7 Jul.
The Playfair Orchestra When Chris George, ex-leader of the Scottish Chamber Orchestra, discovered he had a neurological condition which affected his violin playing, it could have been the end of his career in music. Instead, he has been studying conducting and with an orchestra assembled from colleagues, friends and family, now wields the baton in aid of Motor Neurone Disease Research. Greyfriars Kirk, Edinburgh, Fri 13 Jul.
Glasgow Temptations of Tam Citizens Theatre, 119 Gorbals Street, 429 0022. 7.30pm. £10 (£2–£8). Scottish Opera in association with Citizens Community Company present a community opera inspired by Stravinsky’s The Rake’s Progress.
Anstruther Leipzig String Quartet I Kilrenny Church, Kilrenny, 0131 473 2000. 11.30am. £12–£15. Shostakovich’s Quartet No 1 Op 49, Widmann’s Quartet No 3 and Schubert’s popular Quartet D804 ‘Rosamunde’. Part of East Neuk Festival. Kingsbarns Fire and Water Cambo Barn, North Lodge Cottage, Cambo Estate, 0131 473 2000. 7.30pm. £15. Scottish Chamber Orchestra Strings, with violinist/director Alexander Janiczek, and SCO Brass conducted by James Lowe, play an evening of seriously funearal music: Arvo Pärt’s Arbos and Fratres for Strings, MacMillan’s They saw that the stone had been rolled away, Barber’s Adagio and Shostakovich’s Chamber Symphony in C Minor Op 110a, which is Rudolf Barshai’s arrangement of the composer’s harrowing Quartet No 8. Part of East Neuk Festival.
21 Jun–19 Jul 2012 THE LIST 109