When he stood before a capacity house in the Dunard Library at The Hub in Edinburgh on Tuesday, the new director of the Edinburgh International Festival, Fergus Linehan, revealed that there had been some discussion about whether his address would be as curt as that of Brian McMaster or as prolix as Jonathan Mills.
Of course he did not use those precise words, but that is, slightly cruelly, how his predecessors were perceived and, at the moment, the Festival story is all about what we are to make of Fergus Linehan.
McMaster and Mills could hardly have been more contrasting figures in many ways, but neither made huge dramatic changes in the shape of Scotland's premier arts event, preferring, let us say, incremental and evolutionary development. As Kate Molleson noted in her interview with the new director, the redecoration of the director's office at The Hub, seems emblematic of a desire to make an immediate mark, and to some extent reinvent the Edinburgh International Festival for the 21st century.
Linehan has not been shy to give this impression, calling together the press corps last year to announce a few titbits from his 2015 plans and torpedo the previously stringent EIF embargo before the fitting-out of the new vessel was even complete. A few days later I met him at The Hub giving a guided tour to one of the main promoters from the Fringe. There may have been a great rapprochement between the two events since my early days as an August-in-Edinburgh critic, but it was still distinctly possible that the other man had not been in the building since it opened in 1999.
Then there was this week's launch of a distinct Concerts & Recitals brochure, over a month ahead of the unveiling of the rest of Linehan's inaugural full EIF programme. Here, in a minimalist-design monochrome booklet that matched his slim-fit grey suit, is all the classical music that EIF 2015 will make available to its loyal ticket-buyers at the Usher Hall and Queen's Hall, as well as a programme of recitals of Beethoven sonatas at Edinburgh University's Playfair Library.
Linehan's justification of the early announcement was straightforward: other European festivals like Salzburg, Lucerne and Aix-en-Provence unveil their summer programmes before Christmas and Edinburgh was in danger of looking "like the last cab on the rank". The planning cycle for orchestras and soloists being more long-term than for theatre and dance, those building blocks of the festival were in place earlier, so why not let the public know? There is obvious sense in this. When Linehan said last August that a production of Antigone with Juliette Binoche would be coming to the King's a year hence, it meant that any Scots tempted to travel to London for the same show would keep their bawbees in their purse until Ms Binoche visited them.
But while tickets for Antigone have been on sale at The Hub since the end of November, the classical music programme announced this week will be subject to the same box office regime as the full programme when it is unveiled next month. The Concerts & Recitals brochure is for information only, designed to let music-lovers know that Edinburgh need be their only destination if they want to hear the San Francisco Symphony or Budapest Festival Orchestras, or superstar pianist Lang Lang.
It is no secret that Linehan had planned to put the concerts on sale when the information was released but was met with a discreet - and very Edinburgh - howl of protest from friends of the Festival. Those loyal ticket-buyers wanted to see the whole picture before deciding what to go and see when. To his credit, Linehan accepted the appeal and changed his plans. It may seem obvious that a festival attracts people likely to spend consecutive evenings in the Usher Hall, then at the theatre, or watching dance at the Playhouse, but it is also not difficult to imagine a more gung-ho new director insisting that his new plan is implemented regardless.
There may be another reason why Linehan wanted to have this element of his first festival out in the open early, beyond taking advantage of his novelty to have two bites at the festival launch publicity cherry. He talked of the EIF programme as a "complex piece of algebra", and the Usher Hall programme as a crucial compenent since 1947. Come March 18, it may also transpire that this is the most formulaic part of the Linehan solution to that equation. He is a theatre man and he will expect the focus of the March launch to be on that part of his festival. In showing some of his hand early, the new man has raised the bar. I hope and trust that bodes well.
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