Photo & © Tina Schuster
Guest blogger: Kristina Djerf
We get to the concert hall almost three hours before the concert starts, me, Rachel, Steffen, Tina and her mom. Gävle Concert Hall is partially round and also tiled in blue, which leads Steffen to comment that it looks like the inside of a shower. He does have a point. The doors open half an hour after our arrival and Steffen, Tina and her mom go in. Rachel and I take a short walk down to the park and along Gävle river that runs right next to the hall, and then join the others indoors. After a while Kerstin pops up, and a little later also Maria. Although it’s quite a long time left until the concert starts, we keep busy, by among other things have a coffee or tea and writing and tying our cards to the flowers Helen will get. And not least with reading the concert program. Even though it was previously announced that this would not be an ordinary concert, it’s only now that we realize what it means. By title I only recognize 5 out of 16 songs – and that is unusual at a Helen concert! This will be exciting.
Just before 7pm we take our seats in the front row, and even before we have had time to read Helen’s name around one of the microphones we’ve figured out which one is hers – the one on the shorter microphone stand, of course. And the concert really is exciting. 70-80’s mainly, ballads, pop, rock, synth – Depeche Mode and Coldplay, who would have thought? Many are the times we’ve heard examples of that Helen can sing everything, and this evening she once again proofs that. Just check out the song list:
Enjoy the Silence
(Martin Gore/Depeche Mode)
Love Will Tear us Apart
(Ian Curtis/Joy Division)
Love Letter
(Nick Cave)
I Almost had a Weakness
(Elvis Costello)
Washing of the Water
(Peter Gabriel)
Somebody
(Martin Gore/Depeche Mode)
Heroes symphony, movement 1
(Philip Glass)
Heroes
(David Bowie)
PAUSE
Where the Wild Roses Grow
(Nick Cave)
A Question of Lust
(Martin Gore/Depeche Mode)
Clocks
(Coldplay)
Wicked Game
(Chris Isaak)
I’ve had Enough
(Kate McGarrigle)
Veronica
(Costello/McCartney)
Little Watersong
(Nick Cave)
Fix You
(Coldplay)
Encore Where are we Now
(David Bowie)
Only You
(Yazoo)
No musical songs, no Swedish ballads, no You are my man or Gabriella’s sång. The only songs she has sung before are I Almost had a Weakness – which she also tonight does absolutely fantastic – and Where the Wild Roses Grow. The latter, and Little watersong, have absolutely awful lyrics about blood and murder and drowning. Most beautiful is I’ve had Enough, which Helen sings the last lines of with only minimal accompaniment, and every nuance of her voice fills the hall. All arrangements are newly written for symphony orchestra, and it’s not every day you get to hear such an orchestra play this kind of songs. Since the songs are not the best known you need to listen up a little bit more, and the narrative lyrics, that many of these songs have, Helen is very good at both interpreting and often nearly also illustrate on stage. It shows that Helen thinks this is a fun concert to do, and that she and Magnus Carlson are comfortable with each other. Most of the songs they sing together and their voices go well with one another. From the start they had so many songs to choose from that the concert would have been several days long, they tell us, but they decided to have a few songwriters as basis for the concert.
The overall slightly older audience seem to recognize more songs than I do and everyone applauds generously throughout the concert, and it quickly becomes a standing ovation at the end applause. We hardly want to let them go, even after two encores – but there is hope that this concert may be repeated. And then you better not miss it!