These days Nick Cave cuts a less terrifying, though no less imposing and compelling figure than at the outset of his career. By the end of the show, with his suit shed for a T-shirt (hardly surprising given the ridiculous temperature in the venue) and engaging in banter with audience members, he is more endearing than abrasive, with only occasional reminders of a more out-there past.
There was an intimacy about many of the performances at this year's national street arts festivals that speaks of the confidence of the event. Also, no longer do audiences hang back when there is an opportunity to participate. If the true meaning of that jargon word of the moment "interactivity" still eludes you, a visit to Big in Falkirk would swiftly explain.
It was Art from Oz weekend at the Academy, where Sunday's Nick Cave performance was preceded by the dance frenzy that is a Pendulum gig, with much sweaty crowd-surfing by the partying youth. If Cave's antecedents are often obvious (as well as effortlessly cool), there is much less originality about the music of the men from Perth. But if it seems you've heard much of their music before, that is very much the point. With a background in dance music production, Pendulum sample the floor-filling sounds of the 80s and 90s and serve it up in the guise of a rock band. Bassist Gareth McGrillen and drummer Paul Kodish are a flesh-and-blood rhythm section and both Rob Swire and Perry ap Gwynedd wear guitar-shaped instruments, even if they rarely sound like stringed, strummed or picked things.
It would be fanciful to hope that Nicola Benedetti's superb account of Szymanowski's First Violin Concerto on Friday might spearhead an awakening of interest in Poland's most neglected great composer, whose Fourth Symphony and opera King Roger will receive Scottish performances over the next six months or so. If it does happen, Benedetti's championship of the concerto will be a factor in bringing Szymanowski out of the shadows, not least for the clarity of line, texture and sense of progression within the rhapsodic piece that she and Stephane Deneve revealed in their performance with the RSNO.
Sometimes honesty is the only policy. All appreciation of music, at some point, has to involve issues of taste. It's possible to loathe the music of Beethoven, while acknowledging a good performance of one of his works; the important thing is not to confuse one with the other.
Mozart's Sinfonia Concertante for violin and viola, if it is to confirm its reputation as one of the composer's first profound masterpieces, demands not only two superlative soloists but also the most perceptive of conductors. In Edinburgh, Glasgow and St Andrews last week it got all three, and the result was one of those experiences that makes you realise the music is even greater than you thought.
Irish composer Donnacha Dennehy appears to spend his time working out how best to persecute unsuspecting percussionists. Glamour Sleeper II begins with the relentless stuttering of an imposing kick drum that interrupts and disrupts and stabilises our sense of tempo all at once. Add to that an equally tempestuous piano part that scratches and plucks pitches from the body of the instrument, a violin that seems to be stuck on a singular note and a clarinet that provides some semblance of harmonic relief, and the piece is almost, but never quite, complete.
Graham Fraser
Steve Forman's new work, The Clydean Coronaries, is, in a word, brilliant. The American, who once worked as a session musician with John Lennon, has created a quite beautiful, optimistic view of modern Glasgow. It was performed here by RSAMD brass, solo pipes and percussion, with Forman himself on bodhran, and the young musicians excelled themselves to provide an exciting, vibrant premiere of the work.
These are early days in Mariette Radtke's jazz career, a time when the young singer from Munich is gaining experience of working with different musicians and communicating with an audience. She won't - let's hope, anyway - come up against many more ill-mannered and inattentive audiences than the one she encountered here.
When Germaine Dulac premiered his film The Seashell and the Clergyman in 1928, playwright Antonin Artaud, who penned the half-hour short's original scenario, is said to have heckled the screen, going so far as to call its director a "cow". If such confrontational behaviour sounds like a precursor to punk's assault on culture half a century later, a new score to the film by former Siouxsie and the Banshees bassist Steven Severin is all too appropriate.
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