Attended Ricardo Chailly’s Beethoven cycle at the Barbican last week. This was the
Gewandhaus Orchestra of Leipzig who got their mojo working to LVB’s 1st & 7th symphonies. They claim to be the oldest orchestra in the history of the world and maintain that they are, indeed, the only orchestra to have played all of Ludwig’s symphonies in front of the great man himself. I am unclear as to whether they are referring to the current members but if so I would question such the veracity here, as I suspect the principal violinist wasn’t a day over 104.
Got into a slightly different groove on Halloween night at Ally Pally where
Alice Cooper was giving it large. Most of the crowd were kitted out in appropo togs, you know the sort of thing: swamp man, Michael Myer’s masks, disinterred mummies - very impressive. They band kicked off inevitably with a couple of populist ballards:
I’ll bite your face off and
Chopped limb Casserole (I think). Actually the set had opened with the
New York Dolls, the better part of which we managed to miss but they seemed to get a good response from the crowd.
For serious old farts (well, perhaps not as old as the said violinist) AC capped the show with that traditional scourge of helf & safety,
Arthur Brown, the man with the burning er… helmet. I need not mention what he chose from his distinguished
oeuvre, but seeing as Ally P has been burnt to the ground on a couple of previous occasions, was this not a tad insensitive to the staff? Good on the old bloke, though.
The AC band (not the original) were pretty tight. Three guitarists (one a female), bass & a (top notch) drummer. Alice’s vocals still mostly do what it says on the tin (of poison?).
The truly blood-chilling aspect of the show, though, was having to watch a lot of corpulent old t0ssers insist of sending images of the events to friends and family via smartphone cameras. Get a f*cking life, why don’t you?
Actually, me dwelling upon age like this does rather draw attention away from the fact that there were loads of yoof on the manor, all getting into the spirit of the evening. Good for them, I say.
