Symphonic Pink Floyd: Shine On You Crazy Diamond
Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra (BSO) and Bournemouth Symphony Chorus
with the “Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra Pink Floyd Rock Band”
Conducted by Pete Harrison
The Lighthouse, Poole
Saturday 16th November 20.19, 19.30
SET LIST
Time
Us and Them
Learning to Fly
Hey You!
Shine on You Crazy Diamond
Comfortably Numb
Goodbye Blue Sky / Run Like Hell
The Great Gig In The Sky
INTERVAL
Wish You Were Here
Take It Back
Sorrow
Breathe / Eclipse
Money
In The Flesh
Another Brick In The Wall
ENCORE
Another Brick in The Wall (with audience)
I don’t see the BSO often enough. We were in Bath a while ago, and telling a woman how much we envied the quality of theatre in Bath compared to that in Poole. ‘Poole?’ she said, ‘You’re so lucky. We drive down to see the Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra every week in the season.’
(A footnote: The Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra is based in Poole and has been for years. The main campus of Bournemouth University is also in Poole.)
This fully SOLD OUT concert intrigued me because I have tickets to see the Australian Pink Floyd just three weeks later. I’ve never been a major Pink Floyd fan, but I found the Pink Floyd exhibition at the Victoria and Albert Museum quite wonderful. I saw the BSO do an ABBA concert with a tribute band once. Pink Floyd lends itself much better to the treatment. I tend to re-familiarise myself before concerts and two days non-stop of the original Dark Side of The Moon and Wish You Were Here confirmed my decades long view (Blasphemy!) that they’re a touch lugubrious in the original, and to me, a touch dull. I was hoping a symphonic treatment would brighten them up and bring out the nuances.
It certainly did! Wow! There’s a long history of rock bands with symphony orchestras from Procul Harum with the Edmonton Symphony in 1972, and Deep Purple with the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra in 1969, then Rick Wakeman’s Journey To The Centre of The Earth with The London Symphony Orchestra. Then Roger Waters did the Wall- Libve in Berlin in 1990 with The Rundfunk Orchestra & Choir. Asia did Symfonia with the Plovdiv Orchestra in Bulgaria in 2013. British prog musicians often had a classical training. Two of the best concerts I’ve seen in recent years were John Cale’s Paris1919 concert, and Brian Wilson’s SMiLE concert. Both had classical string and wind sections.
Usually, the symphony orchestra is mainly coloration. This Symphonic Pink Floyd seemed far more integrated and carefully arranged, with the orchestra, chorus and rock band contributing equally.
Before the show. Note guitars and drum cage to the right.
The “Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra Pink Floyd Rock Band” (as Pete Harrison announced it) consisted of lead guitar, second guitar, 5-string bass guitar, drums, keyboard player on organ setting, keyboard player on piano setting. There was a second drummer (who stood up for applause when the orchestra stood up). The main orchestra had timpani in the middle, and three more percussionists. It’s quite a job. The lead guitarist stood up to take solos, but I think you can’t play it any other way.
The sound was magnificent … to all those percussion players and drummer, you add electric bass guitar, then four double basses, plus a cello section, with a lead cellist who took several solo bows. Then you have the full orchestra, plus the Bournemouth Symphony Chorus which I estimated at 110 singers. Yes, that is 110.
The Lighthouse is a hall where I’ve seen many rock bands screw up with poor over blown amplification … they need to come and hear what it can sound like … including drums, bass guitar and lead guitar. This is how it should be and interestingly I’ve seen lots of jazz here that sounds superb too.
I noticed that most violin and viola players had a trailing wire tonight. There were two full soundboards at the back of the hall (they used recorded special effects, as Pink Floyd do) and I wondered how extensively it was mic’d. I asked in the interval if it was being recorded, and was told it always is ‘for the archive’ but not for broadcast or release.
This was the first ever UK performance of the Symphonic Pink Floyd, so maybe they will record it eventually. I noticed the sheet music on the sound board said “Arranged by Hermann Weindorf” so I guess it has been performed elsewhere. All of the songs on The Royal Philharmonic Orchestra’s Plays The Hits of Pink Floyd (1994) were performed tonight though in a different order, and that production had Hermann Weindorf on keyboards. This concert had material, at least five numbers, that were not on the RPO record.
I doubt that anyone was expecting Arnold Layne or Interstellar Overdrive. As far as symphonic treatments go, Pink Floyd begin in 1973 rather than 1967.
Photo: Bournemouth Evening Echo
Time was the opener, but do you think of track titles, or rather Dark Side of The Moon, and it’s on side one? I do. Yes, I still think in LP sides. The track list was never prominent on the LP and I don’t recall anyone back in 1973 saying ‘Hey, listen to Time.” They just put side one on. (I looked at the set list on the sound board at the interval, because titles don’t leap out for me). They started with recorded effects. The immediate realization for me was that this was going to sound better than the original. The lead guitar work by Pete Callard was brilliant. I had wondered how a symphonic treatment would deal with the strength of the electric lead guitar in the originals. Answer: have electric lead guitar.
The next one up was announced by Pete Harrison, Us and Them. Or in my terms Dark Side of The Moon, and it’s on side two.
Learning to Fly is from A Momentary Lapse of Reason (1987).The way that the Pink Floyd songs are worked with a huge chorus, is by selecting sections of lyric, rather than singing the whole thing, so I can’t keep my eyes from the circling sky … becomes almost a mantra for this one.
Hey You! brings us to The Wall and having that many singers chanting Hey you! is a huge effect.
Shine On You Crazy Diamond is one of my favourites, It was on Wish You Were Here in 1975, and Syd Barrett, the subject, unrecognisable, turned up at Abbey Road while they were recording it. The most I’ve ever enjoyed it was at Bournemouth Airport … wait, it was an Air Show, a beautiful sunny day, blue cloudless sky, and they had two microlight planes doing languid aerobatics (I meant languid, they can fly surprisingly slowly) while Shine On You Crazy Diamond blasted out of the tannoy system all around us. At the Lighthouse it was still sublime, and much higher fidelity. Beautiful plangent guitar solo, and an equally impressive solo trumpet. This is a star number for the symphonic treatment.
Comfortably Numb took us back to The Wall. I was once asked to list my favourite Pink Floyd songs, and I chose this … but from Roger Waters The Wall: Live in Berlin where Roger Waters and Van Morrison sang it backed by The Band. Another favourite is Mother from the same show, sung by Sinead O’Connor to accordion from Garth Hudson (who has also covered Us & Them, as it happens). Anyway, the massed chorus effect necessarily truncates the lyric, but the song lends itself to the brass section standing out also.
Goodbye Blue Sky / Run Like Hell were done as a medley, both from The Wall. The recorded animal noises at the start? They seemed to have more birds for longer, so was it from the original or another recording? Did you hear the falling bombs? is the emphasised line. It continues into Run Like Hell with the chorus standing and doing mass clapping over their heads … that’s a mighty wave of sound. The short thrashing guitar section was outstanding.
The Great Gig In The Sky brought on a solo vocalist, Deborah Jordan, for the fabulous (apparently) scat singing, though I assume it’s written.
The interval comes at this point.
Wish You Were Here opened the second half powerfully. I’ve also seen Microlight aircraft do an aerial ballet to this (probably at Fairford Air Show) and it’s one of their most memorable melodies to me.
Take It Back is from The Division Bell (1994). It’s an album I don’t have, and don’t remember ever hearing. It’s got a solid driving drum beat, and sounds more conventional rock song than most. It was enlivened with a timpani section.
Sorrow is another from A Momentary Lapse of Reason, leading off with distorted guitar as it should be for a David Gilmour composition.
Breathe / Eclipse are from either end of The Dark Side of The Moon. They didn’t do Brain Damage, but I used to think Brain Damage and Eclipse were the title track, in that the recorded voices feature strongly as through the album but this is where you get the title. Nick Mason describes recording them with whoever was around at the time at Abbey Road by asking them questions about madness, violence and morality. Paul and Linda McCartney’s answers weren’t used.
NICK MASON: Gerry O’Driscoll, the Irish doorman at Abbey Road was the undoubted star. He delivered a wild torrent of jokes and homespun philosophy, tinged with a touch of melancholy. His voice closes the album in the fade out at the end of Eclipse, and his line ‘There is no dark side of the Moon. Matter of fact, it’s all dark,’ helped clinch the final title of the album. (“Inside Out” by Nick Mason, 2004)
Gerry wasn’t with us tonight, but never mind. These are great tracks.
Money is the one from The Dark Side of The Moon where I do remember the title, because it stands out as different. The ringing till sounds in stereo jumped out as different, then I realized why. Years ago Rolling Stone magazine did a free covermount surround sound sampler disc, with Money on it. On that the tills rotate around the surround sound system in a circle, and I’ve used it many times to check surround sound set up (and to demonstrate it) … which brings me back to Nick Mason. He discusses the extraordinary success of the album …35 million copies by the time he wrote the book, fifteen years ago, and at that point it was still in the US Top 100 from 1973. He says it came out just as people were switching to separates and stereo hi fi, and like Tubular Bells later, it became the standard show-off demo disc.
Here the second electric guitarist got to do the solo (seated) and took it beautifully,
In The Flesh opened The Wall. I was watching the percussion section stage left of the rock band, with shakers and a massive bass drum, bigger than a marching band one. In the last two numbers the percussionist’s wait was rewarded because it was used a lot. It reminded me of a friend’s tale of playing in an amateur large orchestra in the USA. He was a percussionist and said the stress was unbelievable because you were motionless for so long then had to intervene perfectly with just a “ting!” of triangle or single thump of a monster bass drum.
Another Brick In The Wall was the obvious closer. They used just the male section of the chorus initially, then the whole. The chanted mantra was ‘Teacher! Leave them kids alone! All in all, you’re just another brick in the wall!’ Talk about building up a head of steam.
Instant standing ovation at top rock concert levels. The funny thing about taking bows with an orchestra, is that it went in sections … rock band … chorus … orchestra. But every time the orchestra stands, the conductor has to shake hands with the leader (lead violinist). When you get this many repeat bows, so repeat handshakes, it becomes somewhat quaint!
The encore was a reprise of Another Brick In The Wall but this time we were standing, and Pete Harrison on the conductor’s rostrum was really bringing out his inner rock star, moving and grooving, getting us all to clap, then exhorting the entire audience to join in, ‘Teacher! Leave them kids alone! All in all, you’re just another brick in the wall!’
A magnificent evening. Laser lights too. If they tour this, don’t miss it IF you can get a ticket.
SEE ALSO:
The Australian Pink Floyd Show, December 2019
Wow!… Indeed. Your review really does do justice to what turned out to be a truly magnificent performance. According to a friend (just one of the mighty BSO Chorus) there are, as yet, no plans to tour the Symphonic Floyd show though it would surely play to further full houses around the country, and swell the BSO coffers to boot. For this ageing Floyd-head there were so many spine-tingling passages….though perhaps my favourite moment was seeing the grin on lead-guitarist Pete Callard’s face as he readied himself to deliver the ‘legendary’ solo on ‘Comfortably Numb’. It must take a lot of focus to stay with the Dave Gilmore template and resist taking off into the Rock-guitar firmament with the BSO &Co giving you full lift-off….
Of course, talking of Prog-Rock, I guess that one strategically placed Melletron might have replaced the whole orchestra….though didn’t The Moody Blues actually use both on their ‘Days of Future Passed’ album?
So, what are the chances of a BSO/King Crimson collaboration? In the age of Trump & Co I for one would pay good money to hear ‘21st Century Man’ given the full BSO treatment….and perhaps Mr Fripp might fancy working with a 110 piece choir….
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….ooops! That is of course 21st Century ‘Schizoid’ Man….Doh!
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The issue would be Robert Fripp’s intent not to do exactly the same thing twice, which a classic collaboration would have to do. I like the idea, but would draw mainly on Larks Tongue’s in Aspic, and Starless and Bible Black for the melodies. Check out The Unthanks version of Starless for a “folk / strings” version.
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Glad that you loved the concert. We did too. What an amazing audience we had too! It was thrilling to be a part of the chorus.
As there did not appear to be a programme available I just thought I’d update the vocal soloists name . It is Deborah Jordan. 🙂
We thought she did a fab job.
https://www.discogs.com/artist/278647-Deborah-Jordan
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Thanks, Fiona. Corrected. I got the misspelling from the Bournemouth Echo!
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