Yesterday, on Friday the 13th of May 2016, I had the pleasure of witnessing another event of “Hollywood in Vienna”: “Hans Zimmer Live”. It was a truly unique and breathtaking experience,sometimes literally. I received the tickets as a Christmas present and I had been looking forward to seeing one of my favourite composers of Film music perform live on stage with his orchestra. Looking at the stage before the show started, it seemed a bit disappointing, because from what was visible of it, it seemed too small to fit the entire orchestra and apart from the drums and a large piano-like construction with lots of electronic dials, there were no instruments of any kind to be seen. But then the lights dark end even more, the show began with a drumming rhythm and Hans Zimmer entered the stage. He sat down at the piano-construction and started playing a tune. The music was good, but I still missed the orchestra, so it came as an especially pleasant surprise, when the sound of a tuba entered the concert hall and, one by one, the musicians mounted the stage, already playing their instruments. Then suddenly the music grew louder and fuller, as the curtain lifted to reveal a second part of the stage, where the local orchestra was already seated, as they joined in with the others. And finally the choir was revealed behind them in the third sequence and I was beyond stunned. The unseeming stage was now three times its size and effortlessly provided the room for the orchestra I had initially missed. They opened with the title sequence of “Sherlock Holmes” and then Hans Zimmer picked up the microphone and told us about how he came to writing the music for “Crimson Tide”, back in a time when nobody seemed to know him, and how he and Tony Scott tried to persuade the producers to let them use a choir during most of the movie, something that was unheard of in contemporary film music. They then played a sequence of “Crimson Tide”‘s soundtrack, and even without having ever seen the movie, if I closed my eyes, I could see waves clashing against each other during a storm. “Crimson Tide” then morphed into the theme tune from “Angels and Demons”. After that Zimmer announced “Gladiator”, saying that when he told his wife he and Ridley Scott were doing a gladiator movie, all she said was: “Oh, you boys.” As soon as that ended, there was a loud “Nants ingonyama bagithi Baba” from he right entrance, as the original voice of the Lion King entered the stage, to vocally accompany Hans Zimmer’s Lion King theme, very much to the joy of the audience, judging by the screams. Following the performance, Zimmer told the female lead voice, that every night she made people happy and then continued to amaze me by informing us that he wrote the Lion King for his daughter Zoe and subsequently shouted into the concert hall “I love you Zoe Zimmer”, which I couldn’t help but find adorable. He then announced Inferno, which he initially called “I don’t know the title.” It was great hearing he soundtrack, before the movie was even released, but it did sound suspiciously like “The DaVinci Code”, which taking in account that “Inferno”is the four book to Dan Brown’s “Langdon-series”, to which “The DaVinci Code” is the second, reoccurring themes can be expected. The last performance before the break was a chello suite, played by Zimmer Chinese Chellist, who started playing at the impressive age of three years. Zimmer did not tell us what movie it belonged to, but as it turned out he did not have to, since after the first few tacts it was evident that it was Pirates of the Caribbean. Which out of all I found the most amazing, since that was the soundtrack that first made me fall in love with Hans Zimmer’s music.
After the break things were a bit less clear. Zimmer stopped doing announcements, which for me meant that I had no idea what I was listening to about 90 percent of the time, except for one piece, “The Dark Knight”, which I would not have recognized, had they not started the performance with hose exact words. But even without knowing what movie it belonged to, the music was still exceptional. They finished off the show with Zimmer’s “Aurora-Suite” and left the audience to applaud for a good ten minutes before someone turned the head lights back on and swiped beams of light over the concert hall, while making threatening thunder noises, that sounded like something between an air raid during WW2 and a UFO-landing, for another five minutes of ongoing applause until Zimmer and company finally returned to the stage for an encore. After which they received a well deserved Standing-Ovations.
Sadly it was Zimmer’s last concert in Austria for his 2016 Live Tour and the next show will be in Sofia on the 16th of May. The Tour itself will end in Orange on the 5th of June and there are still tickets available. Further details on upcoming concerts can be found on the website http://www.hanszimmerlive.com.
If you can still go to one of the performances, I can only recommend it, because you are certainly in for a treat. In case of sensitive hearing, I would advise the use of earplugs, though.