Ask anyone who is able to and they will tell you there is no experience quite like hearing music live. Listening through earphones or speakers just simply isn’t the same. Well that couldn’t be more true than when hearing a live orchestra with all the musical accoutrements you could imagine play the most beautiful and famed compositions of The Golden Age of Hollywood before your eyes and ears. Not only that but there is also something wonderfully incongruous about experiencing the glamour of an orchestra while sprawled across a beanbag. Yet, as part of the Edinburgh International Festival’s Beanbag Concert Series, it proves a surprisingly perfect way to experience the Sinfonia of London.

With the stalls of the Usher Hall transformed into a sea of beanbags, much of the usual formality of an orchestral concert disappears. You can settle in, stretch out and, crucially, find yourself remarkably close to the musicians. Rather than diminishing the grandeur of the music, the informality makes it feel more immediate; from floor level, you can watch the orchestra at work and feel the sheer force of the sound around you. Hearing the slightest changes in volume, the focus shift from different players, and watching them in action is thrillingly immersive.

And what an orchestra to experience up close. Under conductor John Wilson, the Sinfonia of London tears through a programme celebrating classic Hollywood musicals with astonishing precision, warmth and swagger. Wilson has spent more than 30 years reconstructing the original orchestrations after MGM’s music library was destroyed in 1969, and there is something rather moving about hearing these scores restored to such spectacular life, as well as some contextual tidbits in-between scores.

The programme is overflowing with hits, sweeping through familiar melodies such as ‘Over the Rainbow’, ‘I Got Rhythm’, and ‘The Lady Is a Tramp’, which sound gloriously expansive played by a full orchestra, allowing you to appreciate notes and melodies like never before.

Vocalists Louise Dearman and Matthew Ford are equally superb, capturing the wit, romance and old-school showmanship of the era without slipping into imitation. Dearman in particular possesses the kind of soaring theatrical voice these songs demand, while Ford brings effortless charm and polish.

Joyous, nostalgic and magnificently performed, The Golden Age of Hollywood manages to feel both lavish and completely relaxed.

The Golden Age of Hollywood is at