Ostsee-Zeitung - September 1, 2003


Albums

Songs

Concerts

Press

by Bert Aschkowski

translation by Astrid Nolde-Gallasch


Chris de Burgh met his "Lady In Red" in Ludwigslust

Ludwigslust. The area around the Ludwigslust castle was crowded with cars 
from everywhere on Saturday. The passengers all aimed for the same goal: 
to pay homage to the singer and musician Chris de Burgh. So it were almost 
4000 spectators who didn't want to miss the only concert in Mecklenburg-Vorpommern this year.

And de Burgh - often labelled as the "ever romantic" by critics - showed 
once again that he isn't only a master of ballads. During the first part of 
his almost two and a half hours non stop performance he played mostly songs 
from his last albums that you can desparately look for in the charts or 
radio shows: the rocky "St. Peters Gate" for example or the priceless "Oh 
My Brave Hearts". And even if you never buy that he is a hard rocker, his 
"Revolution", a musical trilogy provided with powerful driving guitar 
playing, is still after all a milestone of the over 160 songs that he wrote 
so far.

That the singing bard of the green island still knows how to enthuse his 
audience solo, he proved with a half hour intermezzo for which he sent the 
band off for a break. Next to acoustical versions of some songs he 
surprised his fan community with "The Road To Freedom" - a piece that he 
wrote for the album that is planned for next year.

When the five member band - four English and one Welsh - returned on stage 
and started with "Missing You", de Burgh had cast a spell over the last 
audience member too. It's no wonder, after over 25 years of constant stage 
presence, that helps being ahead of many others. And: He is a professional 
musican with a distinctive voice, since five years supported by his 
technically very gifted band.

High spirits ("High On Emotion") especially with one "Lady In Red". Anja 
Kastius who lives in Rostock, a dream in a red wedding dress, met the 
singer personally before the concert as the winner of a photo competition 
initiated by a radio station: "I have worked as a model and performed as a 
woman in red to Chris' song, where my husband Tammo saw me first and never 
lost track of me. When we married, the colour of the wedding dress was of 
course obvious."

And so the surprise for de Burgh on Saturday was perfect. The "Lady in Red" 
that he had sung to thousand times, had made flesh in front of the 
Ludwigslust castle in a breathtaking manner.




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File last modified on August 26, 2006