The fifth day of our tour finds us pulling into Edinburgh, Scotland, quite possibly the most beautiful city in the British Isles. Edinburgh is chock full of ancient castles, grassy hillsides, and breathtaking views. More importantly, as far as we're concerned, it's also home to a vast array of summer arts festivals serving every conceivable taste and drawing thousands upon thousands of visitors who darn near take over the city in August. The Edinburgh International Festival, where we'll be performing tonight, is the granddaddy of Scotland's festival season, founded in 1947 and presenting some of the top orchestras in the world every summer, as well as an impressive array of theatre, dance, and opera performances. Running for nearly a month and making use of no fewer than seven venues nearly every night, the International Fest would be enough to keep most cities busy for the summer. But in Edinburgh, that's only the beginning. 

Running alongside the International Festival is the Edinburgh Fringe Festival, which was originally created to showcase edgier, more experimental performances that didn't fit into the original Fest's plans. Over the years, the Fringe has grown exponentially, and these days, it is billed as the largest arts festival on the planet, selling 1,350,000 tickets every summer, and frequently garnering more press coverage than the International Festival that is supposed to be its big brother. The Fringe is almost always full of controversial shows, packed to the brim with political commentary, over-the-top performance art, and no small amount of nudity. The city of Edinburgh has learned to take all this craziness in stride, although rarely does a year go by that someone doesn't suggest that the Fringe could stand to grow up a bit. (All this may sound familiar to Minnesotans, where our own Fringe Festival has grown to become the largest in the U.S., and where many of the same controversies seem to arise every summer.) 

In recent years, a number of other summer festivals have joined the International and the Fringe, and almost all of them are huge. The Book Festival is the largest of its kind in the world; the Film Festival has become one of the UK's most important movie events; and other fests devoted to everything from jazz to science to children run from the moment summer begins to the day that everyone returns to school and work in September. It's enough to exhaust any visitor, quite frankly, and unfortunately, we in the Minnesota Orchestra won't be in town long enough to partake of much of the action. Still, to be one of the featured orchestras in such a prestigious city is a real thrill for all of us, so I'm sure we'll be able to catch some of the excitement before we head for Helsinki tomorrow afternoon. 

Here in Edinburgh, we'll be playing Barber’s Essay No. 1 and a Beethoven piano concerto, and we'll end the concert with Stravinsky's massive ballet score, Petrouchka, which we haven't actually performed since September 2005. All this, and it's also our third concert in three nights, each in a different city. Are we tired? You bet. But really, who cares? We're in Edinburgh; the streets are packed with a lifetime supply of tourists, street performers, and assorted freaks of nature; thousands of people are coming to see us play in one of the greatest music festivals on the planet; and that's just more fun than human beings should be allowed to have.

 

by Sam Bergman