AT THE end of what has been a genuinely successful music programme at the Usher  Hall – EIF director Jonathan Mills’ best so far – the Bamberg Symphony Orchestra’s closing concert, under its suave principal conductor Jonathan Nott, might best be described as nice.

Last year was a bumper one for outstanding performances of Chopin’s piano music to mark the composer’s bicentenary.

OF ALL the shows in all the festivals in Edinburgh this August, this was the one I wanted to like the most. Ea Sola’s 2011 re-creation of her 1995 work Drought and Rain is embedded with so much pain and emotion, it couldn’t fail to move.

CHOREOGRAPHER Shen Wei travelled to Tibet, Cambodia and China before creating the three works that make up Re-Triptych.

AS SHE LAUNCHED straight into Seven Early Songs by Alban Berg on Thursday evening, it was immediately evident there was no messing with Karita Mattila.

OF THE French songs performed yesterday morning in the unusual combination of voice and harp, those by Chausson and Duparc worked more effectively than those by Debussy and Fauré, with harp taking charge of the role more readily assigned to piano.

Certain pieces of music that fit well into unconventional settings and Erwin Stein’s ingenious arrangement of Mahler’s Symphony No 4 is one.

This show has a lot going for it – Eric Lalor is a chummy Irishman with a listenable line in chat.

PUTTING a whole new perspective on the traditional male voice choir, San Francisco’s Chanticleer is a 12-piece ensemble with as many soaring sopranos as deep-voiced basses.

WHILE it was a disappointment that violinist Janine Jansen had to call off her appearance with the Philadelphia Orchestra, under Charles Dutoit, last night – as she did for an entire BBC SSO tour last year – there could have been few complaints about her substitute, French pianist Jean-Yves Thibaudet, although this required a change of programme from Tchaikovsky’s hefty Violin Concerto to Liszt’s lesser-sized, less fulfilling Piano Concerto No 2.