Listings: After 5pm, International Festival

Join the city of Edinburgh in a celebration of summer festivals, inspirational music and breathtaking pyrotechnics as the Virgin Money Fireworks Concert brings the Edinburgh International Festival to a resplendent conclusion. Set against the magnificent backdrop of Edinburgh’s iconic Castle, the evening brings together…

Peter Abrahams, Professor of Clinical Anatomy at Warwick University, explores the value of Leonardo’s anatomical drawings as a tool for understanding the human body, and how closely the artist anticipated the range of imagery used by the medical profession today.

Scottish Ballet presents a World Premiere from La La La Human Steps Founder, Artistic Director and Choreographer Édouard Lock. Lock is renowned for his extreme, incandescent style of dance and his precise technique. His boldly challenging style has always attracted international attention. His creations are an arresting…

The song and dance of Piazzolla’s South American tango music, a Shostakovich waltz and Debussy’s La belle au bois dormant performed by Jo Ashcroft (flute) with Calum Huggan (marimba and percussion).

Bach to Berio, Lutoslawski to Puttin’ on the Ritz performed by Iain Archibald and Andrew Connell-Smith (trumpet), Martin Murphy (horn), Gordon Seith (trombone) and Fraser Russell (tuba).

Intense and visceral, Christopher Hampson’s vision of The Rite of Spring, created originally for Atlanta Ballet, is presented 100 years after the original production revolutionised the world of dance and music. Set to Stravinsky’s exhilaratingly influential score, Hampson uses three dancers – two men and a woman – to…

World Premiere: Cellist Peter Gregson’s new work To Dream Again unfolds after a series of interactions between the audience and bespoke data systems. Created especially for this world premiere, these audience interactions mean that each performance develops in an entirely different way in the laboratory venue and…

An evening of thrilling 20th century classics from the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra under its chief guest conductor, Ilan Volkov, who is widely renowned for the passion and intensity of his music making. Sinfonia by Luciano Berio is a virtuoso work full of colour and humour that poses profound questions about what a…

‘A life of unending misery in a world devoid of God, now that’s funny.’ Maddy Rooney is in her seventies – unsightly, ungainly and unwell – laboriously to-ing and fro-ing between her home and Boghill Station. This is a landscape whose details are drawn from the suburbs of Foxrock and Leopardstown from Beckett’s youth, but…

Seductress, victim, manipulator: Lulu lives off men as both tortured and torturer, purveyor of ecstasy and angel of death. Caught up in greedy games and seedy schemes, and surrounded by lovers driven to despair, Lulu makes an inexorable rise to the highest levels of power, money and fame. But her descent is just as swift.

String quartets by Beethoven, Janáček and Shostakovich performed by Evelien Jaspers and Dmitry Ivanov (violin), Sylvain Dessane (viola) and Otto Bakker (cello).

Leonardo is celebrated as both an inspired artist and anatomist. This special event considers how contemporary artists, performers and scientists are informed by each other’s work in their exploration of the human body. Part of the Clod Ensemble’s Performing Medicine programme in collaboration with Wellcome Trust.

Leonardo’s early anatomical studies were intended to help his work as a painter, but his researches took on a life of their own, becoming the most important strand of his scientific work. Exhibition curator Martin Clayton examines the relationship between these two major aspects of Leonardo’s activity.

Ghosts of the past and present collide through video and sound technology in this evening-long project from the internationally renowned Brooklyn-based Bang on a Can All-Stars, an electric chamber ensemble that brings together some of the world’s most adventurous musical thinkers. The Field Recordings project looks back…

The Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra performs one of the grandest and most moving pieces in the entire orchestral repertoire: Mahler’s Second Symphony. Tracing a journey from funereal despair to the blazing light of rebirth, the Symphony combines moments of hair-raising terror with passages of poignant intimacy. The…

The internationally renowned Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra makes a two-concert visit to the Festival under chief conductor Mariss Jansons, acclaimed for his blistering performances and for his cultured interpretations that shine fresh light on major classical works. Tchaikovsky’s 'Pathétique' Symphony is one of the…

Celebrated Belgian early-music conductor René Jacobs rejects the academic coolness of some period performance in favour of bright colours, dramatic energy and a sometimes unconventional approach. While remaining faithful to his music’s historical roots, Jacobs emphasises emotion and meaning, finding fresh perspectives on…

Minimalist composer Philip Glass’s magical reimagining of Jean Cocteau’s 1946 La Belle et la Bête combines the classic black and white film with live performance in a Šsophisticated work that is at once a touching fairy tale and a meditation on creativity. Removing the film’s original dialogue track and score by Georges…

String quartets by Schubert, Mendelssohn and Dvorák performed by Clemens Flieder and Clemens Gordon (violin), Johanna Zaunschirn (viola) and Gundula Leitner (cello).

Drawn from the finest players across the continent, the Chamber Orchestra of Europe is widely considered to be one of the world’s greatest orchestras. Its two Festival concerts are directed by the young French-Canadian Yannick Nézet Séguin, who is famed for the inspirational energy of his performances. In his…

The celebrated Chamber Orchestra of Europe delves further into the richly contrasting musical worlds of Strauss and Beethoven in the second of its two Festival concerts under fiery young conductor Yannick Nézet-Séguin. Wagner famously called Beethoven’s Seventh Symphony ‘the apotheosis of the dance’, and its infectious…

World-renowned harpsichord virtuoso Christophe Rousset explores the remarkable richness of Baroque harpsichord music in two special concerts that showcase the magnificent instruments preserved in Edinburgh’s own St Cecilia’s Hall Museum. Selecting outstanding instruments from the splendours of the museum’s collection…

World-renowned harpsichord virtuoso Christophe Rousset explores the remarkable richness of Baroque harpsichord music in two special concerts that showcase the magnificent instruments preserved in Edinburgh’s own St Cecilia’s Hall Museum. Selecting outstanding instruments from the splendours of the museum’s collection…

Inspired by film noir, big-band jazz and the movies of David Lynch, City Noir is a spectacular symphonic showpiece by US composer John Adams that paints a gripping yet sensual portrait of California’s urban landscape and culture. It forms the culmination of the all-American second half of the Royal Scottish National…