ryuichi sakamoto - concert review

On the 9th of October, I have attended Ryuichi Sakamoto's concert at Tonhalle Düsseldorf in Germany (read related post here). For the first time ever at a concert, I sat in the first row and I am happy that I got to experience such a great view: I could see his fingers hit the keys, I could admire his incredibly expressive face and hear his feet tapping.

Even though it was a bit difficult in the beginning for him to connect with the audience, the rather solemn atmosphere soon tunred into a warm one: he started talking to the audience, introducing his songs in English with a humorous feel.

Sakamoto did not have a setlist but he started his concert with a few experimental pieces (addressing global warming and its effects on Greenland's icebergs), which underlined his commitment with environmental causes ("Playing the Piano" is a carbon-free tour, watch an interview from AudiTV here).

Eventually he went on playing his most famous pieces (from movie soundtracks) and I have to say that I felt a shudder at the first notes of "Merry Christmas Mr. Lawrence", probably one of the most anticipated pieces of the evening. His songs are quite patterned and repetitive, nevertheless, so melodious that they really spoke to my heart. I had to smile almost throughout the entire concert. Most interesting was the fact that on stage there were two pianos, as is normally the case when two artist play at the same time. Sakamoto's team however have used a special technique, where the artist was able to play and improvise with himself: The rapid changes from one instrument to the other using digital technology will allow entire musical phrases played by Sakamoto on the first piano to be transferred to the second piano in real time (watch an example here). The only thing I disliked were the shapes and images projected in the background (similar to a media-player visualisation). Either abstarct motion or more or less undefined pictures, they were quite distracting.

I loved all his pieces but the most surpising discovery for me was "Happy End" from the Yellow Magic Orchestra days (for a solo version, similar to the one I have seen, click here):

You can buy the album to the tour, "Out of Noise", on Amazon.

(picture source: Sakamoto's photo album on facebook)