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Greats you managed to see before they died

Alex S

carbon based lifeform
I caught Karajan and he was pretty much dead by then and it did kinda matter; Artur Rubenstein also, and it didn’t.
 
Jimi Hendrix at The Isle of Wight Music Festival, August 1970. This was the only time I ever saw him play. It wasn't his greatest performance, judging by the live albums, and was relatively short. Nonetheless it was mind-blowing in parts. Eighteen days later he was dead.

Jack
 
I saw Charles Groves at the Adelphi, Liverpool. He was standing in front of me at the reception desk. He didn’t manage to see me, though - he took his key, turned round and, still examining it carefully, walked slap into me.
 
Freddie and Queen twice.
Had a pint in Belfast with Jeff Buckley...though I'm sure you are bored hearing that.
Woke up on Weatheralls shoulder in a minibus in Belfast on the way to an after party.
 
My girlfriend and I accidentally got shepherded in to Saint Peters Bascilica one New Year’s Eve, and before we knew it Pope Benedict was rolling down the aisle. I don’t remember him singing though, and I just checked, he’s not even dead yet.
 
Lucky you. Did you catch Leonard Cohen? (Another classical great).

Yeah, he came on after Hendrix and entranced the audience. It was the first festival I'd ever been to and I was 15 years old. Seems like another universe.

Jack
 
I saw Mstislav Rostropovich twice in the 1990s, Dvorak Cello Concerto with Bournemouth SO and Andrew Litton at the Basingstoke Anvil (magnificent) and then premiere of James Macmillan's Cello Concerto with the LSO and Colin Davis at the Barbican (interesting).

I saw Gunter Wand and NDR SO do Bruckner 5 and 8 at Edinburgh Festival 1998 and 2000. Unforgettable.

Alfred Brendel (hopefully still enjoying long retirement) Schumann concerto with Charles Mackerras and SCO in 1999. And with Mathias Goerne in Schubert's Schwanengesang.

Jessye Norman in Schubert and Schoenberg Songs. Margaret Price in Schumann songs. Can't remember what year those were.

Claudio Abbado conducting Parsifal 2002 Edinburgh festival.
 
Jack Bruce playing some Cream songs, I last saw him in the mid/late 60s
Stockhausen with a lecture and some of his manipulated tapes
Charles Mackerras conducting, siting down, the SCO playing Mozart Symphonies

All in the Queens Hall, Edinburgh.
 
David Bowie twice, Outside tour and Reality tour.
One of my best friends committed suicide the night before I went to see the Reality tour in Dublin, I kind of did and didn't want to go at the same time, a sad day but a great gig.
 
I saw Malcolm Sargent at the Last Night of the Proms the year before he was too ill to conduct during the season but still made a speech on the Last Night.

He was also the conductor at the first concert I ever went to, some years previously.
 
Ivan Moravec. He sounded exactly the same in person as on disc. Stanisław Skrowaczewski - I'll call him great. Though he is not gone yet, I got to hear Stephen Kovacevich play D960 in recital, which was better than either studio recording.
 
T. Rex, Jimmy Smith, Andres Segovia, Karlheinz Stockhausen, and Kraftwerk (with Florian Schneider) are the first ones that come to mind.
 
Leonard Cohen loads of times including his last UK tour.
Joe Strummer when he fronted the Pogues.
 
Jorge Bolet is the only one who springs to mind in the 'classical' context. Otherwise, Dusty Springfield at the Liverpool Empire.
 
S Grapelli, when I visited the Music Hall in Shrewsbury in 1983/4.

We were a little bit late, and were allowed in the Choir seats during the music, "so long as we were quiet."

We were quiet but not quite enough and maestro Grapelli turned to the only audience behind him and his crack band at the first applause [after we arrived] and each one after that.

I did not meet him later, though I would enjoy a beer in the Green Room as a performer in that hall a few years later. It is one one of less than a dozen concerts of so many more attended as audience [rather than performer] that will live in my memory till I die.

Best wishes from George
 


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