Fitting though it
was that David Bowie’s life and music should be honoured at the Proms, I remain
unconvinced that rock music played by classically trained musicians is an
improvement on guitars, bass and drums played through 100-watt amps by men and
women who play gigs and not give recitals. While the enthusiasm, devotion and
skills of the Stargaze Ensemble and their leader/conductor André De Ridder
could in no way be faulted, these violinists and brass players seemed somehow
unable to inject it with anything like the punch that makes rock sell by the
bucketload and, conversely, albums of classical music struggle to reach five
figures.
On the
TV the Royal Albert Hall was dark and gloomy, with Ridder’s announcements formal
and painstakingly comprehensive, all of which injected an atmosphere of
melancholy worthiness that appeared to me a touch pretentious. The evening opened
with ‘Warszawa’, the moody instrumental in an arrangement not unlike Bowie’s original
on Low, an appropriate start with its
slightly discordant undercurrent and suggestion of impending doom. A xylophone
link led to an avant-garde passage that segued into ‘Station To Station’ sung
by sober-suited Neil Hannon of Divine Comedy, followed by ‘The Man Who Sold The
World’ by an earnest chap with his nylon stringed guitar worn very high, wherein Mick Ronson’s lean guitar lines were adapted for violins and
French horn, the whole piece closing with an ethereal choral coda.
‘This
Is Not America’, another Hannon vocal, was enlivened by a rap interlude by Elf
Kid, a Lewisham grime man. This was followed by Marc Almond’s expressive
reading of ‘Life On Mars’, his arms-wide-open dramatics making up for the occasional gratingly
off-pitch vocal. He would redeem himself later with ‘Starman’.
This
was by no means an all-male affair however. The females in Stargaze assumed the
lion’s share of the backing and Anna Calvi (often with Jherek Bischoff on
bass), Amanda Palmer (with Fender Telecaster and, at the close, babe in arms)
and Laura Mvula (with added soul), all took lead or shared lead vocals as the
evening progressed. Mvula’s take on ‘Fame’ finally injected a bit of tempo into
the evening as the ensemble achieved the difficult feat of getting
foot-tappingly funky with instruments designed for interpreting Mozart and
Beethoven.
The Blackstar trilogy of ‘Girl Loves Me’, ‘I Can’t Give Everything
Away’ and ‘Blackstar’ itself formed the concert’s poignant centrepiece, Palmer
and Calvi topped with what looked like crowns of thorns, the music from Bowie’s
final album lending itself perfectly to the evening’s heart-rending mood. After
that it was a bit of a relief to recognise Robert Fripp’s sinewy guitar motif
of ‘Heroes’ and get back into the groove as the audience got behind Palmer’s
rendition of Bowie’s most loved song.
Opera singer Phillipe Jarousky, a
counter tenor, surprised us all with his surprising high-pitched vocal on
‘Always Crashing In The Same Car’, and Marc Almond brought back a bit of oomph
with ‘Starman’ – at one point he yelled ‘Let’s take it up now’, surely a first
at the Proms – and I probably wasn’t alone in wondering if he’d pull off the
song’s famous octave leaps. He did, just.
It was
left to John Cale to bring the evening to a close. Wearing a calf-length dress
of the kind work by middle-aged ladies in drawing room plays, his white hair nicely
awry, he was in fine Velvety voice, his version of ‘Valentine’s Day, sounding a
bit like Tom Waits, while the full-on arrangement of ‘Sorrow’ – an odd choice
though Bowie covered the Mersey’s hit on Pin
Ups, of course – made it sound as if a real rock band had stumbled
uninvited into the RAH. Cale’s final offering was a rather dirge-like reading
of ‘Space Oddity’, his deep Welsh tones lending a degree of gravitas to the
song that contrasted with Bowie’s more vulnerable interpretation of the plight
of Major Tom.
To close the evening Marc Almond led
the ensemble through ‘After All’, and finally the Stargaze players took over
for an instrumental version of ‘Let’s Dance’ for which the audience, clearly
delighted by what they had seen and head, contributed vocals.
I can’t help wondering what David
would have made of it, though. Flattered maybe, but probably disappointed that
no one who’d actually worked with him – Eno maybe – hadn’t taken part, and bemused by its earnestness. Six and a half out
of ten.
(The photograph was taken from the web, credited to The Guardian)
You are way too generous...
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