Festival Music

Eurovision Young Musicians 2018 final

Usher Hall, Edinburgh

Keith Bruce

three stars

WHEN testing in schools is such a political hot potato, spare a thought for the young musician, for whom the global round of competitions is an unavoidable facet of forging a career, often continuing well beyond such other milestones as an Edinburgh International Festival debut.

So perhaps it is surprising that a competition has not previously featured as part of the Festival programme, but while its inclusion in Scotland’s Year of Young People was apposite enough, I half hope that it is a while before Edinburgh’s turn to host the Eurovision Young Musicians biennial contest comes around again.

I was unable to attend any of the semi-finals, but it seemed from my seat in the stalls that those who made it through were not of as uniformly high a standard as we regularly hear in the BBC’s own biennial, whose participants are of the same age. Nor was there a UK competitor in the final (the last, and so far only, British winner of the Eurovision one was cellist Natalie Clein back in 1994), yet this country is certainly producing many exciting young talents.

Norway, Slovenia, Czech Republic, Germany, Hungary and Russia were the finalists with two violins, cello, double bass, saxophone and piano soloists taking their places in front of the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra and chief conductor Thomas Dausgaard to perform. One self-composed piece (by the Czech bassist, who sported a kilt for the occasion) was up against works by Elgar, Sibelius and Ibert, with a brace of concerto movements by Tchaikovsky, played by 18-year-old Slovenian violinist Nikola Pajanovic and 16-year-old Russian pianist Ivan Bessanov, to my ears well ahead of the rest. The judges chaired by Sir James MacMillan went for the younger man, about which there could be no complaint.

The concert’s presenter Petroc Trelawny observed that the hall was last used by Eurovision in 1972, when Grand Prix by Vicky Leandros, representing Luxembourg, pipped The New Seekers’ Beg, Steal or Borrow to win the song contest. After a flirtation with politics at home in Greece, Ms Leandros was still making records at the start of this decade. Bessanov will wish for as lengthy a career.