A candlelit piano recital featuring works by Rachmaninov, Tchaikovsky and Rimsky-Korsakov performed by Warren Mailley-Smith in the atmospheric interior of St Giles' Cathedral.
Warren Mailley-Smith brings a candlelit piano recital to St Giles' Cathedral on Saturday 31 October, as part of the cathedral's Evening Concert Series. It's a single-performer night, with Mailley-Smith on piano, and the programme is built around Rachmaninov.
The main event is Rachmaninov's Piano Sonata No. 2, played in its revised version. Alongside that, he'll perform a selection from the Preludes Op. 23, so the two biggest Rachmaninov pieces take up most of the set. The rest of the programme steps away from him: Tchaikovsky's October from The Seasons provides a quieter, more evocative moment, and the evening closes with Rachmaninov's own arrangement of Rimsky-Korsakov's Flight of the Bumblebee, which is as fast and technical as the title suggests.
Setting it in St Giles' is a big part of the draw. The recital is performed by candlelight inside the cathedral's vaulted interior, one of Edinburgh's most recognisable landmarks, so the room itself does a fair bit of the work. It's a candlelit piano performance rather than a full orchestral night, which keeps the focus on the piano and the space around it.
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The concert runs from 18:15 to 19:15 on Saturday 31 October, so it's an early evening slot that wraps up by 7:30. If you're planning to head in, it's worth keeping in mind that the whole thing is staged inside the cathedral, and the candlelight is part of the setup.
