Concert review: Deep Purple at Birmingham LG Arena

Monday 28th November 2011, 11:00AM GMT.

Deep Purple
LG Arena, Birmingham
Concert review by Ian Harvey

Billed as ‘The Songs That Built Rock”, this was a chance for rock legends Deep Purple to do something a little different after an astonishing six years touring to promote their last album, 2005′s Rapture Of The Deep,

And that something different was to play backed by a 38-strong orchestra, members of the Frankfurt New Philharmonic.

The are plenty of rock bands who have experimented with orchestral sounds, and indeed Purple themselves were quick off the mark with former keyboard player Jon Lord’s Concerto For Group And Orchestra back in 1969.

But in truth, last night’s concert was only a partially successful experiment, largely because Deep Purple’s sonic bombast is so huge that for much of the concert the orchestral players were simply drowned out, violinists’ elbows bowing away to no discernible effect at times.

At one point even singer Ian Gillan’s tambourine was louder than the orchestra!

But when the sound engineers did get the balance right, band and orchestra dovetailed beautifully, never more so than in guitarist Steve Morse’s bitter sweet solo, Contact Lost.

Elsewhere, Rapture Of The Deep’s eastern sounds were magnified by the orchestral players and both Knocking At Your Back Door and Perfect Strangers sounded as if they’d been written with the orchestra in mind.

The perennial Smoke On The Water also gained a little extra backbone and, of course, the biggest singalong of the night.

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