photo - wikipedia/CC
The highlights include a new production by the award-winning, Wrocław-based Song of the Goat Theatre entitled 'Return to the Voice', inspired by ancient Gaelic and Scottish musical traditions: laments, psalms and songs of exile.
In preparing the show, company director Grzegorz Bral and several members of the team examined archives of traditional Scottish songs and met both musicians and representatives of organisations cultivating Scottish music.
'Return of the Voice', commissioned by the Fringe Festival following the success of the company's 'Song of Lear' at the 2012 Fringe, will be premiered on 6 August at St. Giles Cathedral and will have a run of 13 performances.
Jazz vocalist Anna Maria Jopek has been invited to join the Song of the Goat Theatre for the project.
Addressing a press conference in Warsaw, Grzegorz Bral said that the presentation of the show about ancient Scottish traditions on the eve of the Scottish independence referendum assumes a special significance.
The Director of the Edinburgh International Festival Jonathan Mills told the conference that, coinciding with the 100th anniversary of the outbreak of the First World War, the event is an exploration of the impact of history, particularly during periods of warfare and unrest, and the immense influence exerted by a powerful few on the issues of national identity and the forging of our cultures.
“Political circumstances may change but human freedom must remain absolute,” Miils says, adding that the concert of I, Culture Orchestra in Edinburgh is a perfect illustration of this message.
The brainchild of the Warsaw-based Adam Mickiewicz Institute, this orchestra brings together 111 young musicians from Poland, Ukraine, Belarus, Moldova, Armenia, Georgia and Azerbaijan. On 17 August, at Edinburgh's Usher Hall, it will perform two works with an evidently anti-war message: 'Sinfonia Elegiaca' by the Polish composer Andrzej Panufnik and Shostakovich's Symphony No. 7, subtitled 'Leningrad', which was dedicated to the city of Leningrad and its half a million victims of the city's siege.
Jonathan Mills also listed a concert by the Polish Radio Choir among the musical highlights of the Edinburgh International Festival. It will present a programme of religious works by Polish composers Henryk Mikolaj Gorecki and Krzysztof Penderecki. (mk/pg)