Tubular Bells / Charles Hazlewood's All Star Collective, Queen Elizabeth Hall - review

This wasn't quite what it promised. If Will Gregory of Goldfrapp and Adrian Utley and some even less high profile musicians are stars, then, of course, Charles Hazlewood is entitled to call his line-up "All Stars". And they did indeed play Tubular Bells (or, to be exact, Part One of it), but it was only the climax of an evening devoted to minimalism. Just to make sure everyone knew Mike Oldfield's enduring masterwork was a little low-brow for him, Hazlewood soured the mood by sneering at the music itself ("grubby") and those who like it ("bell-ends"), while incorrectly claiming that Oldfield had played every note on the original. For all that, the 11 lavishly gifted "stars", plus actor Paul McGann reading out the instruments and adding a certain low-key sensuality to the word "glockenspiel", were a revelation. They picked Tubular Bells apart and put it back together again, eking out its weirdness, its accessibility and its bravery.

Hazlewood was a more eager teacher when championing both Terry Riley, whose revered A Rainbow In Curved Air was as the compere noted, "like stepping into a giant lava lamp" and the more-minimalist-still Steve Reich, whose Four Organs featured, yes, four organs simultaneously playing one increasingly expanded chord, plus maracas. Minimal it may have been but it offered maximum pleasure.