Songs From The Labyrinth: 2006/07

A storm of ovations for Sting and Edin...

The world-famous duo, a day after Bucharest, also delighted Zagreb.

The concert ended as it had begun - with endless applause in which the Zagreb audience thanked world stars Sting and Edin Karamazov for their journey into the past, to the 16th century, when most of the songs that the artists played on their lutes in the packed Vatroslav Lisinski Hall were composed.

Good evening - Sting could barely get a word in from the deafening applause, so as a reward for his fluent Croatian he received an even longer one. This was followed by songs from the best-selling classical music album 'Songs From The Labyrinth', in which the excellent vocal ensemble "Stile Antico" also participated.

After 45 minutes, the duo left the hall, and only Sting returned, followed by applause.

Finally, the hits themselves - And now songs by another British composer - me! - Sting made the audience laugh and started his song 'Fields Of Gold'. Karamazov soon returned and in medieval attire they played other of Sting's greatest hits such as 'Message In The Bottle', 'Roxanne' and, of course, 'Every Breath You Take'. All in all, an hour and a half of superb concert after which the ovations and applause did not stop, so no one felt sorry for the money for the justifiably expensive tickets.

It's expensive, but worth every kuna - confided HTV journalist and editor Sanja Mikleušević, with which the rest of the 'celebrity' team at the concert agreed. Everyone had a perfect time, and in the sea of praise only lawyer Anto Nobilo found a flaw.

- The second part is good, but the first one killed me - cried Nobilo and explained - I'm closer to the generation of his hits, so I was thrilled by their arrangement on the lute.

The concert was also attended by Zrinka Cvitešić, Željko Bebek, Boris Novković, Luka Bulić and others.

(c) Večernji by Marin Levaj

Songs from the Labyrinth performed by the most famous 'musical policeman'...

As part of his tour promoting the album 'Songs from the Labyrinth', popular English musician Sting visited Zagreb for the first time in his career in a 90-minute performance, during which he mostly performed songs by John Dowland - with the help of Edin Karamazov and the Stile Antico choir - and delighted the sold-out Vatroslav Lisinski Hall.

A combination of different circumstances is responsible for this great music star's first visit to the Croatian metropolis.

The first is Sting's great love for the lute - a stringed instrument whose name was first mentioned in 3000 BC. The body of the European lute resembles a pear cut in half, and the round back part is made of ribs. After concerts with the reunited group The Police, Sting would lock himself in his room and practice playing it.

In the 20th century, the lute experienced a great revival in the hands of artists such as Julian Bream and Edin Karamazov, but also thanks to a revived interest in early music.

The second circumstance is Sting's acquaintance with Edin Karamazov, a lute virtuoso with a permanent address in Zagreb, without whose initiative and desire to perform with Sting in the Vatroslav Lisinski Concert Hall, this special and great musical event would probably not have happened.

Karamazov is also Sting's lute teacher, thanks to whom the English musician performed for the first time in his long career at the famous Sydney Opera House, and before Zagreb they visited several metropolises of the Far East, including Tokyo.

The third is Sting's fascination with the musical oeuvre and story of John Dowland (1563-1626) - an English composer and lute player, and the most famous composer of the early 17th century. Dowland's music is characterized by deep melancholic dissonances, and he is credited with making a major contribution to art song. He composed complex harmonic transitions and strikingly dissonant chords.

The question is how much interest the Croatian public has in the lute, Edin Karamazov and John Dowland, but it is a devastating fact that a concert event like Sting's first Zagreb performance failed to find a sponsor, that it caused a storm of indignation over the price of the ticket and that it took as long as fifty days to sell out (Lisinski only accepts 1,800 people).

It is certain that most visitors visited Lisinski yesterday solely because of the character and work of the popular Sting, who took to the minimalist stage with Karamazov a little after 8:00 p.m., and after a brief tuning of Karamazov, the concert began with the recitation of one of Dowland's letters.

The performance of the song 'Flow, My Tears' followed, after which Sting himself took up the lute and, with the help of Karamazov and the London choir Stile Antico, sang 'Can She Excuse My Wrongs?'.

Although the performance of the song was flawless, as well as the voice matching of the choir, Sting's inferiority in picking the strings of this interesting instrument over Karamazov, who was responsible for the more complex parts and solo parts on the lute, was transparently visible.

'Have You Seen The Bright Lily Grow?' followed, and the highlight of Dowland's performances was certainly 'In Darkness Let Me Dwell', with which the duo said goodbye to the Zagreb audience for the first time.

After the first encore, what most of the audience expected followed, i.e. 'downland' versions of Sting's solo hits ('Fields of Gold', 'Fragile'), as well as those from the era of the mega-popular group The Police ('Message in a Bottle', 'Roxanne' and 'Every Breath You Take').

The three encores that the musicians were given (and deserved) also included a performance of a song by the great English composer Elgar, as well as a performance of the timeless 'In My Life' by the inimitable The Beatles. The Liverpool foursome once again justified the quality of their original material, which sounds excellent even with the accompaniment of a lute.

Towards the end of the concert, Sting replaced the lute with an acoustic guitar with plastic strings (the guitar largely replaced the lute as an instrument in the 19th century), only to return to the lute in a brilliant solo performance of the last concert song, Robert Johnson's timeless 'Hellhound On My Trail'.

The only drawback of the concert was the obvious unpreparedness of the Zagreb audience for this classical music concert, to which most of the audience responded with excessive applause and even screaming.

Not recognizing Sting's concept of a story composed of a sequence of songs and a sequence of readings of Dowland's letters, most of the audience spoiled the whole thing by clapping, and in the final part of the performance there were even inappropriate intrusions at the beginning of the recognizable 'Fields Of Gold' or 'Fragile'. Watching, for example, a recording of this duo's concert from Milan, it is obvious that silence is the greatest applause.

Sting, Karamazov and six lutes and one guitar, with the help of the Stile Antico choir, restored a touch of the 16th and 17th centuries to Lisinski. Karamazov demonstrated virtuosity on the lute, Sting primarily his enviable elastic vocal abilities and ability to navigate different musical styles.

And together they made the audience wonder whether a Fender Telecaster was really needed for 'Every Breath You Take' to take its place as one of the most popular songs ever, and whether the Gibson L1 guitar in 'Hellhound On My Trail' was really needed to give birth to the entire blues genre, or whether a five-thousand-year-old lute could have done it just as well.

(c) Muzika.hr