Concert Review: Düsseldorf, Germany - November 20, 1996
Astrid Nolde-Gallasch:
It was tremendous. Lights went out, and Chris appeared on stage, just him alone, he went to the piano and started the show with "Carry on" and "Here is your Paradise". Then "Sailing away" on the guitar and the crowd was already singing with him. Well, I can't remember each and every song, but it was really brilliant to see him do all those songs alone. In all of the concerts I saw there was a small part when Chris played all alone without the band, and these were always the parts that I loved best, where you can figure out what a great musician he is. The crowd loved him and you could see how much he enjoyed to play for us. He was making all those jokes I remembered from what the Canadian concert-goers were telling, like "I cannot play Patricia tonight ... they say it's politically incorrect." Or, when he introduced "Moonlight and Vodka", he told the story when he was playing for Boris Jelzin in the Kreml. He was telling about him playing in Africa, for about 100 people and 10000 lions, elephants and kangaroos (well, he said that Jeff Philips was sure, he saw a kangaroo ...;-) ). Sometimes he asked the crowd what to play, somebody shouted out "Rosanna", and instantly he began to play this beautiful song. Then there was the karaoke part of the show. And guess who went to the stage and started to sing with Chris??? No, no ... wrong, not me ... it was the girl who we met before the show, who was so sad that her date with Chris was busted. She sang "A rainy night in Paris" and she really had a great voice, Chris seemed very impressed.
After some more songs on the piano and the guitar the string quartet came on stage. It was not the Hungarian String Quartet that accompanied Chris on the Canadian tour, but a German String Quartet from Mannheim (called the Quadrigo String Quartet, if I remember correctly). Chris sang a lot of songs from the Beautiful Dreams album with them (and with Peter Oxendale on the piano), but they also did one classical piece solo, the Hungarian Dance No. 5 from Johannes Brahms. That's a classical piece which is usually played by a whole orchestra, and the string quartet version was rather interesting. With the string quartet Chris also played "Desperado" from the Eagles and "Eleanor Rigby" from the Beatles. Then the quartet went off stage and Chris was solo again. He said "well, I think now it's time to dance, come here to the stage". Wow, how lucky was I that I was in 2nd row. Rather quickly I found myself standing and dancing right in front of the stage. Chris was playing "The Traveller", "High on Emotion" and finally "Patricia". After "Don't Pay the Ferryman" Chris went off stage for the first time, but of course the crowd didn't let him go, so he came back and played "Riding on a Rainbow" as the first encore, then later "Where peaceful waters flow" (with the usual nahnanananahnah at the end) and finished the show with "Hey Jude". It was a really really great show, I was singing and dancing so much, today I'm quite hoarse. Oh, and did I mention ... some women went to the stage during the show, bringing him roses or orchids ... but the last rose he got (after Riding on a Rainbow) was from ME! He blew me a kiss for it! :-))))