Quatuor Mosaiques, Queen's Hall Conrad Wilson Star rating: ***
When the leader of the Quatuor Mosaiques breaks a string, it is - or was yesterday - a major incident, involving the rest of the quartet sharing the mishap and quitting the platform for what seemed an inordinate length of time.
Near the start of Haydn's Seven Last Words from the Cross, and coming so soon after a different Haydn mishap at the Usher Hall, it boded ill for the rest of a work which, even at its best, can seem a trudge.
A series of eight adagios, even from the father of the string quartet, is not necessarily the most inviting of prospects, though here it was a chance for gut-stringed period instruments, in the hands of world-renowned experts, to come into their own. Yet to expect this ensemble's famed delicacy of touch to make its point on this occasion was perhaps no more than a faint hope. By the time, halfway through, a member of the audience appeared to have been taken ill and the performance again ground to a halt, the atmosphere of the concert seemed to have been seriously disturbed. The festival's director, despite his fractured ankle, got to his feet and sat down again. What would happen next? In the following movement, we found out. The cellist broke a string and, though the other players this time stayed on the platform, the audience began to dwindle.
The rest, fortunately, passed without interruption. Though the work, despite some magical moments, sounded as stern as ever, there were fine things to be heard, including the exquisite pizzicati of the sixth adagio and the muted violins in the eighth. Yet the question whether the Seven Last Words work as an entity remained. It is surely the only way they can do so, but with the charms of the D major Quartet, Op 33, No 6, as a sweet-tone prelude, they were certainly put to the test.
The Last Witch, Royal Lyceum Theatre Neil Cooper Star rating: ****
Women who dare to be different have been vilified by misogynist bullies for centuries. This seems to be Rona Munro's point in this darkly erotic piece of imagined history co-produced by the Traverse Theatre with the Edinburgh International Festival. By the end, however, a metaphysical magical realism has taken hold via a more ambiguous but no less thrilling turn of events. Munro takes as her starting point the figure of Janet Horne, the last woman to be executed for witchcraft in Scotland. From this, Munro conjures up a rolling thunder of richly textured poetry.
Set in Dornoch in 1727, The Last Witch paints Janet as an eccentric all too willing to exploit and mythologise her own mystical inclinations, even as she seems to believe she has the power to transform herself into a black crow or a bee. Living with her daughter Helen, Janet's relationship with her neighbours is framed by unspoken curses, and when new sheriff David Ross comes to town, her true powers become clear. Helen, meanwhile, slowly wakens to her own blossoming magic after meeting a handsome stranger called Nick.
Director Dominic Hill has invested the sensuality of Munro's language with a mighty production that burns its way to a fiery conclusion before soaring into expectation-subverting flights of fancy. As Janet, Kathryn Howden delivers a startling performance. Her interplay with Andy Clark's vicious Ross is an intense piece of flirtation. Hannah Donaldson's Helen, meanwhile, moves from twisted vulnerability to empowerment as she takes up her mother's mantle in a breathtakingly profound piece of work.
Il ritorno d'Ulisse in patria, King's Theatre Keith Bruce Star rating: *****
If Silviu Purcarete's Faust at Ingliston was an event on an epic scale, William Kentridge's staging of Monteverdi's treatment of Homer is an intimate one that is just as unmissable.
On a semi-circular set sit viol ensemble the Ricercar Consort, who play the music with precision and authenticity. Above them, a screen shows animation and video footage, mostly monochrome but including medical and naturalist drawings, landscapes and floods. The characters seem to have their own emblematic images that recur above them.
On the playing area, Ulisse recreates the story in flashback from his hospital bed. Like all the characters, he is a puppet, operated both by a technician from South Africa's award-winning Handspring Puppet Company and his voice, Julian Podger. Other characters perform the story as similar trios from hospital furniture around him or on the gallery above the band. It sounds complex but it is anything but. It is direct storytelling that does as sound a service to the classical saga and its concerns about the relationship between the gods and men, as it does to Monteverdi's early opera.
The technology involved is understated and the production is wonderfully self-contained. It demands concentration, particularly to take in the surtitles, but the show is poetic, quite beautiful and moving.
The singing is first-rate across the cast, but Romina Basso's extraordinary mezzo voice has to be singled out. Not only is it an incredible instrument, but Kentridge's Penelope, in both human and puppet form, is every bit as elegant as the one in the Royal Ballet of Flanders' version of the same tale.
Sponsored by Standard Life.
The Last Witch & Il ritorno d'Ulisse in patria were reviewed in yesterday's later edition.
