A candlelit piano recital by Warren Mailley-Smith featuring Beethoven's Moonlight Sonata and other classical masterpieces at St Giles' Cathedral.
Warren Mailley-Smith brings Moonlight Sonata by Candlelight to St Giles' Cathedral on Friday 27 November, part of the cathedral's evening concert series. It's a solo piano recital that builds around Beethoven's Moonlight Sonata, Op. 27 No. 2, and the cathedral's Gothic architecture on the Royal Mile will be lit by candlelight for the night.
Mailley-Smith has built his reputation on a mix of technical precision and a certain stage presence that's hard to pin down. He made a name for himself in 2015 when he performed the complete solo works of Chopin from memory, and since then his career has taken him across the UK, Australia, and Europe, with tours in China and the USA. He keeps about 30 piano concertos in his repertoire and made his concerto debut with the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra.
The Moonlight Sonata is the centrepiece, but it's far from the only thing on the bill. The programme pulls from a few different corners of the piano repertoire: Chopin's Fantasy Impromptu, Op. 66; Liszt's Un Sospiro, S.144 No.3; Grieg's Wedding Day at Troldhaugen, Op. 65 No. 6; Rachmaninov's Prelude in C-sharp minor, Op. 3 No. 2; and Debussy's Clair de Lune from Suite bergamasque. It's a fair spread of the Romantic and Impressionist eras, with the Beethoven sonata holding the middle.
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The setting does a good deal of the heavy lifting here. St Giles' is one of the Royal Mile's most recognisable landmarks, and seeing it lit by candlelight rather than the usual electrics changes the whole feel of the space. The concert runs from 18:15 to 19:15, so it's an early evening one that wraps up in an hour.
