A view from inside the pavilion that the EIF has built in the Old Quad to meet the demands of the pandemic by keeping its audiences together but apart (socially distanced seating) and inside but outside (walls open to the wind). 

I was in the Old Quad at noon on a blissfully sunny and warm day to hear classical music live for only the second time since Covid cancelled everything.  It was delicious.  The young Dutch violinist Noa Wildschut played a sonata by Fauré, a selection of Shostakovich preludes, a pair of Sibelius pieces and the spooky, lively, lightning fast Dance Macabre of Saint-Saens.  She finished off with a contrasting slow and peaceful encore from Gluck's Euridice that had the audience spellbound as its closing notes drifted quietly away.  Hats off too to her accompanist Latvian pianist Lauma Skride who had stepped in at short notice to replace an injured Elisabeth Brauß. 

The previous week I was in the pavilion's big sister out at Edinburgh Park.  You could shelter an aircraft carrier in it. I had gone to see Shona the Musical Choir.  A Scottish/African choir are developing a musical interracial love story that has the modern history of Zimbabwe and its Shona people as background.  It was a little hard to follow the narrative but the music, singing and dancing were joyful and exuberant.  

Joyful and exuberant are not terms you could apply to the EIF's only substantial theatre offering but Medicine at the Traverse was stunning.  Rather than my feeble attempts at describing it read Joyce Macmillan's five star review in The Scotsman.

I left the festivals to their own devices for an afternoon to listen to a reading of Animal Farm on Radio 4 Extra, followed by an "In our Time" episode discussing the book.  Had the weather been better I'd have gone to Holyrood Park to see what the EIF programme calls "a durational outdoor dance-happening conceived in a physically distanced world".  Not sure which of these is truly satire.