Unconventional? There's little to scare the cultural horses

International Festival 2025 has world-class performers, but no revolution (or Rush tickets)

Groundbreaking dance in The Dan Daw Show. Pic: Shannyn Higgins

The Edinburgh International Festival (EIF) launches its 2025 programme today.

At 133 performances in total, it’s notably slimmer than the 171-strong 2024 offering. According to Festival Director Nicola Benedetti, this “more compact festival” is a result of Creative Scotland’s long-delayed multi-year funding decisions, and the resulting “budget uncertainty at the time of programming”, writes Will Quinn.

In response, Benedetti and the EIF team have, she explains, “...leant further into the team’s creativity and, of course, that of our artists presenting. The result? An “unprecedented volume of unconventional performances in unconventional ways.”

So will the International Festival be casting off its concert hall grandeur and setting aside its coterie of classical artistic superstars?

Not quite. With seven world premieres, eight UK and Scottish premieres and two European premieres including a new play by the multi-award winning James Graham OBE starring Brian Cox, a new ballet - ‘Mary, Queen of Scots’ - from Scottish Ballet, and an opening concert, Sir John Taveners’ “The Veil of the Temple” - a choral behemoth clocking in at 8 hours, there’s little to scare the cultural horses.

The (Wood)Winds of Change?

That isn’t to say there aren’t signs of change amidst the stellar assemblage of operatic stars such as Grammy award-winning countertenor Iestyn Davies, Leonard Bernstein winner Emily D’Angelo, 2024 BBC Young Musician of the Year, pianist Ryan Wang, and the resident London Symphony Orchestra under Sir Antonio Pappano. There are only two fully staged operas and neither Opera Queensland & Circa’s circus-enhanced ‘Orpheus and Eurydice’ nor Huang Ro & Ars Nova Copenhagen’s puppet-laden ‘Book of Mountain and Seas’ count amongst the conventional. Yes, there is some Mozart and Puccini in Concert (ie no costumes, no sets, and minimal acting), but only a few years ago such a preponderance of the new and/or unusual would have been unthinkable.