Cultural Crackers to Explore over Holidays

29th December 2014

Performing Companies and National Collections offer wealth of exhibits and performances.

Holidays for many over the festive period offer the ideal opportunity to enjoy spectacles put on by Scotland's National Performing Companies and National Collections, which are funded directly by the Scottish Government.

Cabinet Secretary for Culture, Europe and External Affairs, Fiona Hyslop has encouraged people to experience some of Scotland’s greatest cultural offerings and support the arts, museums and galleries throughout the country this Christmas and New Year.

Ms Hyslop said:"2014 has been incredible for Scotland with its year-long programme of activities, featuring hundreds of events right across the country and celebrating the very best of Scotland’s creativity and cultural heritage.

“It has been a fantastic year for all five of our National Performing Companies who have continued to make a very significant contribution to our country’s great cultural wealth, dominating Scotland’s largest stages and concert halls while also extending their reach with performances held as far afield as Russia, the United States, China, and across Europe.

“Likewise our National Collections have continued to demonstrate their international pedigree by welcoming thousands of visitors throughout 2014 from around the world, with many more expected during the festive period. With our impressive assortment of museums, galleries and ancient and historical monuments, there truly is something for everyone who wants to participate in, and benefit from, the great cultural wealth that Scotland has to offer.

“What better way to send off this historic year of Homecoming than by supporting and celebrating our very own Scottish cultural bodies this Christmas and New Year."

Over the festive season:

• Scottish Ballet will be kicking off their tour of Peter Darrell’s The Nutcracker in Edinburgh, with the world renowned production still as popular as ever over 40 years since it first premiered. Full of magical memories and festive fun, this iconic show has been completely reimagined by Olivier Award winning designer Lez Brotherston. Accompanied by the Scottish Ballet Orchestra performing the world famous Tchaikovsky score live, this is sure to be a Christmas cracker. The tour later continues to Glasgow, Aberdeen, Inverness and Newcastle.

• Glasgow Royal Concert Hall will resound with Handel's Messiah, brought to life by the Royal Scottish National Orchestra. Conducted by Laurence Cummings, and with a young, all-British cast of soloist singers, they bring out all the glory, the joy and the timeless inspiration of a masterpiece. In Dunfermline and Langholm, RSNO celebrate the New Year in traditional Viennese style, with a charming selection of waltzes, polkas, mazurkas and arias - led by the music of the ‘Waltz King’, Johann Strauss Junior. The Viennese Gala continues on to Perth and Inverness.

• The Scottish Chamber Orchestra welcome 2015 in sizzling style with New Year on the Danube, a lively selection of rhapsodies, dances and waltzes from Budapest and Vienna. The tour opens on New Year’s Day at Edinburgh's Usher Hall before continuing to Ayr, Dumfries and St Andrews. The programme includes colourful, gypsy-inspired dances by Kodály and Brahms, plus favourite Viennese marches, waltzes and polkas by Johann Strauss. Cartoon fans will love the frequently used Hungarian Rhapsody No 2 by Liszt as heard in Mickey Mouse, Tom and Jerry and Bugs Bunny.

• National Museums Scotland is the first European venue for the touring exhibition Game Masters at the National Museum of Scotland in Edinburgh. Visitors can explore the development of video games through interviews with game designers, rare original game artwork and over 100 playable games. During its Scottish stay the exhibition will feature the work of four pioneering Scottish companies and designers: DMA Design and Space Budgie from Dundee, Lucky Frame of Edinburgh and Glasgow’s Simon Meek.

• The National Galleries of Scotland is showing the first major retrospective of the neglected giants of 20th century Scottish art, Robert MacBryde and Robert Colquhoun. ‘The Two Roberts’, as they were known, took the London art-world by storm in the 1940s and held sell-out exhibitions of their paintings, but by the 1960s their position as two of the country’s most celebrated artists had been eclipsed. Few artists have catapulted to celebrity or descended into obscurity so swiftly. The Two Roberts is on at the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art (Modern Two) in Edinburgh.

• The National Library of Scotland reflects treachery, power struggles, royal in-fighting and religious wrangling in 'Game of Crowns', its major winter exhibition in the capital. It tells the story of the 1715 Jacobite rising as the 300th anniversary approaches. Records, books, maps, portraits and songs, are used to explain this turbulent period of British history. Visitors can also see the handwritten Order for the Massacre of Glencoe, one of the most chilling documents in Scottish history.

• The National Records of Scotland has loaned 13 rarely seen manuscripts to ‘Game of Crowns’. Its own exhibition in Edinburgh, ‘The Kaiser’s Spy in Scotland’, tells the entertaining story of AK Graves, an unreliable German agent jailed in 1912 for naval espionage. Among the documents on show for the first time are parts of his spy kit, including a code book and secret messages about the Royal Navy’s weaponry and strength, in a cat-and-mouse game played by British counter-espionage and German spymasters.

• The Royal Commission for Ancient and Historic Monuments of Scotland (RCAHMS) and Historic Scotland have worked with partners to ‘reconstruct’ the lost tomb of Robert the Bruce. Using cutting-edge technology and new research, experts have been able to analyse recently unearthed fragments of the tomb to create 3D digital models of what it would have looked like, forming part of a special exhibition at Glasgow University’s Hunterian Museum. King Robert I of Scotland was buried at Dunfermline Abbey but his tomb was lost in the turmoil of the post-Reformation era.

Looking beyond the festive holidays, 2015 promises more cultural gems, including:

• Scottish Opera begins the 17-venue Opera Highlights 2015 tour in Rutherglen this January. While it may be winter outside, this operatic garden party is sure to warm up audiences with its energy and humour. A cast of four singers and a pianist perform a musical mix of opera highlights including favourites from Verdi’s La traviata, Bizet’s Carmen and Mozart’s The Magic Flute. In Glasgow and Edinburgh, a new production of James MacMillan’s modern masterpiece Ines de Castro comes to the stage.

• National Theatre of Scotland gets the Scottish leg of its Belong 2015 season underway in April with a new, touring Gaelic adaptation of Whisky Galore. Directed by Guy Hollands, this is a co-production with Robhanis and A Play, A Pie and A Pint. National Theatre of Scotland’s Artistic Director Laurie Sansom has curated a diverse season, with stories of communities under pressure from within, friends and family rallying round, and people making incredible journeys to escape and invent new identities.