Concert for CARE 2010: An Overview

Variety concerts are a mixed bag. After all, the clue is in the title, and while there may be the odd less-than-stellar performance you can relax safe in the knowledge that something different will be coming up in a few minutes. A concert bringing together a variety of film composers then naturally faces the same problem, except instead of sitting through a band whose album you are not familiar with you find that you haven’t seen the film they have scored.

After a successful debut at Brixton Academy in 2009, concert producers David Arnold and Tommy Pearson were at the Royal Albert Hall last night to stage the second Concert for CARE, a charity evening staged to raise money to tackle world poverty. Arnold, one of Britain’s most popular film composers with five James Bond soundtracks under his belt, had assembled an evening of comedy and music, with some of the world's finest film composers providing music to be performed live by the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra. Oh, and Lawrence Llewelyn Bowen turned up too, but sadly did no wallpapering.

CARE International is one of the world’s top three aid agencies, and it’s status was reflected in the amount of talent featured. With a line-up that included music from Dario Marianelli, Craig Armstrong and John Ottman, the quality of the programme was never going to be less than superb. All of the composers were present to introduce, and in some cases conduct, their music, and though some were far from natural speakers it was an undeniable thrill seeing these often reclusive purveyors of movie magic. Chris Gunning in particular was effortlessly charming, and Anne Dudley's brief rant about the final edit of American History X received a round of heartfelt applause. Musical highlights came from Craig Armstrong, with the beautiful Glasgow Love Theme from Love Actually, and Johnny Greenwood, the Radiohead guitarist who did such outstanding work with the soundtrack to There Will Be Blood. The performance of ‘Future Markets’ from that film’s soundtrack album was a wonderful showcase for the string sections of the orchestra, and reminded the listener again of just how unique and special that movie is.

Performances from vocalists including Imogen Heap and Paloma Faith broke up the schedule, with the former performing an own composition and the latter singing a piece that David Arnold had assured her ‘was from a film’. It was a seductive number that saw Faith stretching her jazz diva muscles, and may be seen by some as an audition for the next Bond title-track. David Arnold and Kaiser Chiefs front-man Ricky Wilson also appeared for a comedy ukelele duo, which was sadly more miss than hit and took valuable playing time away from the real draw for most people, the composers.

On top of the fantastic music there were a number of comedic interludes from the likes of Ed Byrne, Jimmy Carr and Matt Lucas. Carr was on fine form, clearly enjoying the chance to peddle some of his smut in front of a fairly upper class audience, and was rewarded with some of the biggest laughs of the evening. However, Matt Lucas of Little Britain fame walked away with the show, instructing the audience to tut rather than clap at his performance of Charlie Chaplin’s Smile with opera tenor Alfie Boe.

Sadly with so many composers there were inevitably popular cues that were ignored; Dario Marianelli’s Pride and Prejudice, anything from Harry Potter 4 from Patrick Doyle, the main Shrek theme from Harry Gregson-Williams, all were sadly notable by their absence. Perhaps most glaringly, in spite of a rousing suite of music from Independence Day, as a huge fan it was disappointing that the only Bond music performed by Arnold was a karaoke version of You Know My Name, the theme tune to Casino Royale. Played undeniably to the best of it’s ability by the Royal Philharmonic, as a rock song it felt flat without any vocals, and the guitar solo was mixed so poorly it sounded like it was being played on a Casio keyboard. With such universal acclaim a cue from Tomorrow Never Dies would have been far preferable.

Then again, it was hard to be too disappointed when faced with such beautiful music in the undeniably spectacular surroundings of the Royal Albert Hall. For three hours this variety show proved to be, well, invariably superb.