Innovations brought about by the new director of the Edinburgh International Festival, Fergus Linehan, have helped the Festival to a record year at the box office, taking a total of more than £3.8m in ticket sales income, an increase approaching 20% on 2014's already record-setting year.

With the Fringe and Book Festival also reporting a successful 2015, Linehan's controversial decision to bring his programme back into alignment with the other events produced a concentration of three packed weeks when the city was busier than ever has been justified.

"It has taken away the anxiety of competition," Linehan said yesterday. "Everyone has done fine if not better, so we have lost any sense that we are in competition with one another."

He said that is was a logical conclusion to the working together of all the capital's festivals begun under his predecessor, Sir Jonathan Mills. "Jonathan was in at the birth of Festivals Edinburgh that began this process."

With the usual Virgin Money Fireworks Concert in Princes Street Gardens bringing his first programme to a conclusion last night, Linehan's opening spectacular, Harmonium, a son et lumiere projected on the Usher Hall and staged in the concourse outside to mark the 50th anniversary of the Edinburgh Festival Chorus, was also a huge critical and popular success.

"It didn't feel like people that 'What is this?'," Linehan said yesterday. "It seemed quite logical. So now we need to start fund-raising like mad to make something happen next year, but it is the sort of event for which I hope we can develop commercial partnerships."

The extension of the Festival's programme into areas of pop, rock and other contemporary music, centred on performances in the event's home building, The Hub, has also proved popular.

"In ticket terms it played only a small part, but the response has been spectacular," said Linehan, "and there has been no sense that it cuts across the core of what we do. We were road-testing things to see what worked and what didn't, as well as to see if the building would work in the context of the Tattoo happening next door."

The director revealed that the core of the programme, at the Usher Hall, is still much on his mind, and what that series of over 20 concerts should look like. His original plan to put the classical concerts on sale before the rest of his inaugural programme was quickly reversed after protests from ticket buyers.

"You do have to make mistakes in this job, and you find out about them pretty quickly in this town," he said. "We didn't consult widely enough on that one, but I still think that the classical music programme needs to be able to breathe apart from the excitement around star actors or ballerinas being in town, so there was merit in our first major announcement being directed towards that part of the programme."

As for the 2016 Festival, ticket-buyers may not need to wait for too long to hear about some of that.

"The majority of next year is already in shape, and I'd like to make some announcement before Christmas if possible. We just need some final confirmation."

The overall attendance at this year's Festival is estimated to exceed 435,000, with 82% of all available tickets issued to an audience from 78 nations. The 2300 artists presented in the programme represented 39 nations.

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