A RECITAL for horn and piano appeared an odd way for the Festival to conclude its Queen's Hall series.

THE natural destination of the Harmony and Humanity theme in the popular early music series at Greyfriars Kirk was the sacred vocal music of Bach.

ANY festival would be hard-pressed to present a performance of such sublime beauty as that of the Tallis Scholars on Friday evening.

THERE was one point in Friday's European premiere of Optical Identity - an intruiging multi-sensory collaboration between Cathie Boyd's Theatre Cryptic and the T'ang Quartet - when technology got the better of it.

FOR a Festival music programme that has had its eccentric touches, ending it with an all-out tribute to the acerbic tonal world of Francis Poulenc, and in particular the decapitation of an entire convent of nuns in his opera Dialogues des Carmélites...

THE San Francisco players signed in - very appropriately - on Wednesday with a swaggering account of the well-known Fanfare for the Common Man by fellow American Aaron Copland.

OVER the past weeks many vocal ensembles have graced Greyfriars Kirk, but The Tallis Scholars, directed by Peter Phillips, eclipsed them all with their sublime performance of Palestrina: musical legend.

IN A piece of bold programming the SFS plunged straight into the dramatic finale of Strauss' music drama Salome, based on Oscar Wilde's original play.

WITH minimal set and strong attention to atmosphere, Theatre Alba give a very welcome production of Peter Pan creator JM Barrie's little-performed ghost play, Mary Rose.

SHOSTAKOVICH'S Symphony No 5 is not just a monumental piece of music, but represents the composer's fight for his life, in this case represented by his successful rehabilitation into the Communist Party.

WELL-KNOWN in mainland Europe, the long-established Huelgas Ensemble are undeservedly less recognisable to audiences in the UK.

THE Harmony and Humanity theme continues this week with La Venexiana's presentation of responsories by Carlo Gesualdo, otherwise known as the Prince of Venosa - a man as famous for his personal life as for his compositions.

THE most notorious of Renaissance composers - he murdered his wife after catching her "at it" with a duke - the aristocrat Carlo Gesualdo produced an astonishing output of music.

DARING to be different, this world premier of a new production from the Cologne Opera of Richard Strauss's Capriccio is a fitting climax to this year's International Festival.

THE first three short pieces by American composers which opened this rather lightweight concert were easily the highlight in what was overall an underwhelming performance by the San Francisco Symphony Orchestra.