@ Usher Hall, Edinburgh, on Fri 7 Aug 2015 @ 22:30
Despite the months of preparation that have gone into The Harmonium Project – the gathering of biometric data, the painstaking digital animations, the assumed amounts of paperwork – the premise of the performance is on one level simple. The 20,000-strong crowd have gathered to witness nothing more than music and lights. But the result – always beautiful and, at times, breathtaking – is even more than the sum of its parts.
It is like being trapped inside Disney’s Fantasia, as colours spill across the blank canvas of the Usher Hall. At times, the dome appears to whirl so hard, it looks like a flying saucer. We see the stars of a thousand galaxies; falling golden tickets; shrouded faces behind a rainbow of nerves; luminescent brain waves and heart beats. Towards the end, all the stops are pulled out, as smoke billows and a wealth of lights fling up towards the heavens. The music – Harmonium by John Adams – is spiky and loud and often discordant and calm, almost all at once. The Festival Chorus and the RSNO, both recorded a few days before, produce a haunting sound, accomplished and soulful in equal measure.
There is one hiccup, as first night Tattoo fireworks delay the performance by about 15 minutes. The fault was with the Tattoo rather than the EIF, though one imagines a certain number of slapped foreheads among the organisers, that no-one thought to move the start time half an hour later. But, in the end, it doesn’t matter. How could it matter? With such an unnerving, gorgeous spectacle before a spell-bound crowd, locals and tourists gathered side by side. If only the whole of August could be so tolerant.