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Antony And The Johnsons live

mit dem London Symphony Orchestra

06.11.2008, 11:48, Text: Alexander Mayor
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Unser Autor Alexander Mayor von der britischen Band Baxendale wollte sich die Gelegenheit eines Londoner Konzerts nicht entgehen lassen. Seine Nachlese lest ihr hier im englischen Original.

31.10.08, London, GB, Barbican Hall.

There are opportunities in economies of scale. You go from being a niche car manufacturer selling coupés to the rich, to turning out the generic model you see outside a million homes, reaping it big. This rather trite truism of markets is to an extent also true of cultural careers, and it's sometimes a little bereaving to encounter.

Okay, so I dramatise. The reason for this macro-economic musing? Antony And The Johnsons, he of that voice and those songs returns to the stage at a few internationally poised concerts featuring, in London, a symphony orchestra. He's playing to his most loyal ardent audiences, some old songs, some new songs and the odd cover version, all on larger sonic stage.

On one level this show was everything it could and should have been. The shy diva took to the stage in almost total darkness, a hulking form in a sarong-style gown and wig, his voice arresting above a 60+ strong London Symphony Orchestra, the finest classical players in the UK. The audience is rapt, reverential even as they peer through the darkness which is only pierced by Antony's voice variously tremulous and strong. some songs really take wing "Cripple And The Starfish" becomes a plangent cowboy lament amid the Morricone-esque strings. New song "Another World" is a beautiful, almost unresolvable sound, the orchestral harmonies piling upon each other as Antony sings "I need another world... the place where I can go", surrounded by musicians and oddly, himself.

Video: Antony And The Johnsons - "Another World"



But if there's an issue with this more-musicians-is-more-music approach, it's the question of scale. Hegarty's voice to this sense was the orchestra. The surprise of it, its range, its pain, the journey it took you on. But add it to a 50 strong orchestra and it sounds lost and predictable, an ironic reduction given the amount of people on stage. The show became oddly ... nice. Weren't these songs supposed to be the kind of bedroom symphonies that genuinely unnerve? From another world?

The pulse quickened only when he gave new life to Beyoncé's "Crazy In Love", a mall-rat symphony if ever there was one, which sounds frankly beautiful slowed down and re-gendered. But it's a rare moment of excitement in what is essentially star-is-allowed-to-play-with-orchestra by the books, which should probably be illegal this many years after David St. Hubbins wistfully spoke of it in "This Is Spinal Tap".

Antony has been nothing if not surprising, which made this classical move somewhat of a misstep. In perhaps an admission of this, and bear in mind we're in loutish Britain, before the encore of "River Of Sorrow" an audience member broke the silence shouting "Ace Of Spades!". "That's more like it!" replied a smiling Antony, not missing a beat. Strangely, one thinks, if only.

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