|
|
|
|
||
The 30th Anniversary Performance Of The Concerto For Group And Orchestra at the |
||
|
||
|
|
||
Here's Paul Mann's statement about the concerto |
||
|
One of the things that music can do for us is to define time. We can call up the whole diary of our emotional lives at the touch of a CD button: past worlds, otherwise irretrievable, can be brought back to live by anything from a fragment of a song to an entire symphony. All great musicians have touched countless lives in this way and Deep Purple are no exception; having touched my own.
Whenever I heard the original Concerto for Group and Orchestra recording, I am back in my grandmothers house, the green Harvest label spinning on the radiogram, a young kid leaping around in front of a mirror, "conducting" the record. Since I was only four years old when the original recording took place, I have had plenty of time to prepare myself for tonight, a chance, finally, to make a childhood dream come true. In case you are wondering what my grandmother was doing with a Deep Purple record, you'll find the answer in the programme credits. My uncle, Colin Hart, now Deep Purple Tour Manager was then just beginning his career as a roadie for the band and records regularly found their way home.
I first mentioned the possibility of reviving the concerto to Jon around five years ago. An insurmountable problem emerged: the whole thing, score and orchestral parts, had somehow got lost; all that was left was the recording, extensive searches from London to Los Angeles turned up nothing. So that, apparently, was that, at least until a day earlier this year when Jon was approached in Rotterdam by a young composer Marco DeGoeji. Amazingly he had reconstructed the score, guided by only the CD and the video tape, a labour of love which had taken him almost two years.
Once Jon had received the draft score, we met in London to take a first look at it. It was an extraordinary piece of musical detective work - even the guitar and organ solo, largely improvised at the concert, were notated down to the last detail. The only part he hadn't attempted was the drum solo !
It provided the best possible starting point to restore the concerto. The first thing was to fill any gaps that remained in the score, passages that were doubtful or downright indecipherable on the recording. Replacement figurations had to be worked out, and although occasionally Jon would suddenly remember something about what he had actually written all those years ago, he gradually found himself substantially revising the work as he put it back together.
Listeners who are familiar with the concerto in its previous incarnation will quickly recognise the revisions that have been made. There are a few small cuts to tighten the structure here and there, as well as one or two additions, the most substantial of which is an extra verse for Ian in the second movement. There are countless refinements in the orchestration, among the most easily discernible of which are a reinforced crescendo at the very end of the first movement and a brief contribution from the hushed full strings to the string quartet episode at the end of the second movement.
Anyone who works for any length of time with Jon, will soon discover that he operates in a category of his own, outside the normal demarcations of musical territory. One is not supposed to be a great rock 'n' roll keyboard player and a composer of concertos. Music is all one thing for him and he is interested in it all, which makes for some great conversations, especially concerning the English music, about which he is passionate: Elgar, Holst and Vaughan Williams, all composers whose influence can be clearly heard in the concerto.
Even though he wears those influences on his sleeve, Jon's music still has it's own voice. It speaks directly, and unpretentiously. He is not one of those rock musicians indulging some grandiose concept with a combination of enthusiasm and bad technique. The concerto still sounds fresh, energetic and inspired. Most of all it is, as was always intended to be: great fun. It's been a privilege to have played a part in bringing it back to life.
Paul Mann, 8th September 1999
