Scotland

Opening Concert: The Veil of the Temple – Usher Hall

With its hushed reverence and cosmic scale, John Tavener’s The Veil of the Temple opens this year’s Edinburgh International Festival not with a bang, but with an invocation. Across eight immersive hours in the Usher Hall, Tavener’s vast and luminous work offers something rare: not simply music, but a spiritual experience—at once intimate and immense, ancient and disarmingly modern.

First performed in 2003 as an all-night vigil in London’s Temple Church, The Veil has never been heard in its entirety in Scotland—until now. It is a demanding work, not only for the 250-strong ensemble of singers and instrumentalists, but for the audience as well. Beginning at 2:30 p.m. and ending at 10:15pm, this performance asked for attention, stillness, and patience. It gave, in return, something deeply moving.

Structured in eight cycles, the piece gently shifts between languages—English, Greek, Church Slavonic, Aramaic, and Sanskrit—and between religious traditions. Tavener’s aim was never syncretism for its own sake, but a deeper gesture toward the unity of all sacred traditions. Rather than telling a story, the music moves in expanding spirals, repeating phrases that gradually evolve in harmony, intensity, and tone.

The sound is magnificent. The Monteverdi Choir, Edinburgh Festival Chorus, and the National Youth Choir of Scotland perform with focus and stamina. The Royal Scottish National Orchestra, conducted with serene control by Sofi Jeannin, play with humility and restraint—always serving the singers, never overwhelming them.

What elevates the performance beyond the purely musical is it’s spatial imagination. This is not a concert confined to a stage; it is an immersive sonic experience that envelopes the audience from all sides. Singers are placed in different areas of the hall—balconies, aisles, even behind the audience—so that voices drift and circle in a way that feels unbound by architecture. At one extraordinary point, in the last movement, the choir sings from the foyer of the Usher Hall itself. The sound reaches the main space as a ghostly murmur—barely audible, but deeply haunting. It is like hearing prayer drift in from another world, or like being inside a structure that is itself breathing. In a work so concerned with spiritual liminality, this disembodied sound is astonishingly effective.

One of the most quietly powerful visual elements of the evening is a ritual involving eight candles. At the start of each of the seven cycles, a single lit candle is carried solemnly into the centre of the hall and placed on a raised dais. With each new cycle, another is added until, by the final movement, eight flames adorn the dais—and then, at the close, all eight are removed – the cycle is complete.

What is most striking, though, is how this simple gesture transforms the architecture of the hall. The Usher Hall, with its circular layout, does not resemble a cruciform church. And yet, through the positioning of the dais and the choreography of sound and light, it creates its own kind of nave—a central sacred axis around which the rest of the performance revolves. This becomes the focal point not only for the candles, but later for singers too, who gather and sing around it in one of the most intimate and spiritually charged moments of the work. The effect is not to imitate sacred architecture, but to evoke it symbolically, and to do so within the secular grandeur of a concert hall feels both bold and beautiful.

The staging avoids distraction. Lighting changes are subtle, shifts between cycles marked by soft pools of gold, blue, or violet. Singers are mostly still, standing or seated in arcs, and dressed all in black. No theatrical gestures are needed—the music is more than enough.

That said, practicalities aren’t ignored. Recognising that eight hours on a stiff seat might break more than spirits, the organisers wisely offer alternative seating options: beanbags in the Stalls. These turned out to be both a blessing and a comic subplot. As the hours passed, I find myself unconsciously devising seven distinct ways to sit on mine—cross-legged, side-leaning, knees-up, curled like a cat, upright with heroic intent, reclined like a philosopher, and finally, in the universal pose of the spiritually enlightened: slumped but somehow transcendent. A small reminder that enlightenment is sometimes physical as well as metaphysical.

Tavener’s music requires that kind of surrender. By the close, the sound rises to a monumental climax, but even then there is no grand finale. The work simply continues, like a liturgy that stretches beyond the boundaries of time. It invites the listener to let go of expectation and sink into presence. The repetition of the final Sanskrit chant—Shantih, shantih, shantih – less a conclusion than a gentle, whispered release.

In the almost silent ending of the monumental work the Usher Hall is at first still, then rapturous. Applause comes in waves, and when it does, it feels like a great release of emotion but also respectful, careful and grateful—less a performance ovation than an acknowledgement of something shared and rare.

It was certainly a bold programming choice for Festival Director Nicola Benedetti: to open the festival not with razzle-dazzle, but with stillness and a sacred glow. Yet it set the tone beautifully. In a world of fractured attention and performative noise, The Veil of the Temple asked us simply to listen, to breathe, and to be present with others. It gave space—musical, emotional, even spiritual—for that to happen.

Not everyone would find eight hours of Tavener’s mysticism their idea of a good night out. But for those willing to meet it on its own terms, it offered a transformative journey. Quietly, gently, and without fanfare, and for me the most powerful opening the festival has seen in years.

Reviewer: Greg Holstead

Reviewed: 2nd August 2025

North West End UK Rating: