Location: Udine / Teatro Nuovo Giovanni da Udine / Italy
Date: Thursday, 09.02.2017
Udine’s Teatro Nuovo Giovanni played host to a world-class music legend. Rick Wakeman, the English keyboard wizard who made his name as a member of prog rock icons Yes, has been one of the most gifted, original, skilled and charismatic figures in the music world since the early seventies. Alongside Keith Emerson, Jon Lord, Tony Banks and Richard Wright, he makes up the elite of the most respected keyboardists in the history of rock. Wakeman, a classically trained keyboardist, first caught people’s attention as a session musician and a member of prog-folk-rock legends Strawbs, and soon became famous for his pioneering work in bringing electronic keyboards into the fold. In the first half of the seventies he also wowed audiences with a particularly innovative concept: combining a rock band with a classical orchestra and choir. Rick’s first three studio albums, »The Six Wives of Henry VIII« (1973)«, »Journey to the Centre of the Earth« (1974) and »The Myths and Legends of King Arhur and the Knights of the Round Table« (1975), are, a little ironically, still his best to this day. That’s all the more interesting when you consider he has released more than a hundred solo albums by now.
Rick headed out on a short tour called ‘Yet Another Evening With Rick Wakeman’, which covered four dates in total. One of them was his show with our western neighbors, in the very cozy setting of the Teatro nuovo Giovanni di Udine. For the occasion, Rick performed completely solo, meaning no backing band, on a big Fazioli concert grand piano. He didn’t need any sheet music at all, since he can play his masterpieces from memory, even if you woke him up in the middle of the night and dragged him out of bed. The still hugely charismatic keyboard grandmaster entertained us between songs with plenty of witty quips, which he’s never been short of. No wonder he was once the most popular member of Yes among the fans, and in his later years he also kept audiences laughing with his humor on the BBC TV show ‘Grumpy Old Men’. Rick had no problem admitting that the only Italian words he’s learned over the years are the names of different kinds of spaghetti.
The other thing Rick loves most besides music is history, which he’s touched on many times on his solo albums, and he made a point of mentioning that this evening. From his cult debut, he played »Catherine of Aragon in »Jane Seymour« back to back with incredible fire and subtlety. His tight, precise playing was pure poetry for the ears the whole time, and it made no difference whether it was a piano take on the sprawling, complex epic »The Myths and Legends of King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table« or an ‘adaptation’ of some simpler-to-play The Beatles classics. Rick especially thrilled us with his renditions of the unforgettable rock classics »Space Oddity« and »Life On Mars?«, with which he remembered his friend David Bowie, who left us too soon. It was Bowie who got Rick hooked, in the late sixties, on the idea of writing his compositions on piano first. Bowie’s logic was that if a composition sounds good on the piano, it will surely sound good when played on other instruments too.
Of course, Rick didn’t forget to play a few pieces from his time with Yes, which he left no fewer than five times during his career. This evening he picked three Yes songs, including, somewhat surprisingly, »The Meeting« from the one and only self-titled album by the 1989 project Anderson Bruford Wakeman Howe. The better-known evergreens »And You And I« and »Wonderous Stories« stirred up a somewhat bigger wave of excitement, and the latter came off especially interesting in its piano version. The maestro’s takes on The Beatles evergreens »Help!« and »Eleanor Rigby« were also a nice change of pace for the evening, while the highlight of the show was a longer section from the epic treat »Journey to the Centre of the Earth«, with which Wakeman wrapped up the regular part of his set in grand style. In fact, he never even left the stage before the encore. Instead he cracked a joke about the tradition of obligatory encores and then played »Merlin the Magician«. In the second encore he surprised all of us with »White Rock«, which comes from the album of the same name from 1977. That album was the soundtrack to a film about the 1976 Winter Olympics in Innsbruck, Austria.
One of the best keyboardists of all time showed once again, even in a solo show in Udine, that he’s still in a class of his own when it comes to piano versions of some of the most beloved classics from his solo career and assorted evergreens from rock history. Even though maestro Wakeman performed completely solo without a backing band, the individual numbers in a purely piano format made for a very pleasant and interesting ambient experience that we enjoyed immensely, even if Wakeman’s show was, visually, anything but exciting. There was no long silver cape around Rick’s shoulders this time, and after years of battling alcohol dependence he has physically let himself go quite a bit, but at least his hands remain the part of his body he can still be extremely proud of. Even in his old age, Rick is still an extremely active solo musician who likes to take on various side projects now and then. His renewed collaboration with Jon Anderson and Trevor Rabin has stirred up the emotions of everyone who misses the ‘real’ Yes again. Rick’s next tour, covering ten dates on British soil, will promote his new album »Piano Variations« (2017), which even reached Rick’s best chart position in the UK since 1975, a big commercial surprise both for him and for many lovers of good music.
author: Peter Podbrežnik
photographs: Aleš Podbrežnik
