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London,
Barry Millington's rating
Reader rating
Description: Gavin Greenaway conducts Sir Paul McCartney's latest classical work, an oratorio in four movements scored for choir and orchestra, and featuring soprano Kate Royal, Academy Of St Martin In The Fields Orchestra, London Voices and boys choirs from Cambridge and Oxford. Sir Paul McCartney will not be performing at this event.
Phone: 0207838 3100
Trains: Tube: South Kensington/Kensington High Street 
Paul McCartney laps up the undeserved applause at the Royal Albert Hall
Spellbinding: French pianist François-Frédéric Guy
Paul McCartney's pretentiously titled oratorio Ecce Cor Meum has been eight years in the making, he tells us. Eight years! Any tolerably competent student composer could have knocked off a better hour's worth of music than this vacuous tosh in as many days.
Invited by Magdalen College, Oxford to compose something to celebrate the 550th anniversary of the college's foundation in 1998, McCartney eventually delivered this feeble cod-classical meditation on peace and love, the flailing vapidity of whose music is matched only by the toe-curling triteness of the words ("So much wonder around us/All the love in the air").
Full marks to Kate Royal, the boys of Magdalen and King's College, Cambridge, and the Academy of St Martin's under Gavin Greenaway for doing their duty with mirthsuppressing sang- froid. It's outrageous though that Magdalen should commission something so amateurish.
The first half (which even Macca didn't bother to attend) prepared the way with more sentimental syrup from the great man's pen. One piece, in a rare moment of selfawareness, was actually called Junk. Royal, Andrew Staples and the Belcea Quartet put a brave face on it.
François-Frédéric Guy
Queen Elizabeth Hall
****
Peace and love are the preoccupations of Liszt's Bénédiction de Dieu dans le Solitude too, but the French pianist François-Frédéric Guy was not afraid to seize on the robust elements as well as the mystical.
His hallmark, however, is an undermining of metre and an avoidance of rhythmic emphasis that tends to deprive the music of its natural sense of momentum.
It makes for uncomfortable listening when one beat is elided with the next, as though slipping through quicksand.
In Beethoven's Waldstein Sonata, op53 - for all Guy's wonderful play of colour and tone - the result was unfortunate in that the dynamic, emphatic aspects so characteristic of the composer were continually subverted.
There were moments in Brahms's Sonata No3 in F minor where something similar happened, but the work was less compromised by it. Indeed, when Guy retreated into his private fantasy world, beyond metre and pulse, in the lovely slow movement, he tapped a vein of pure enchantment.
But there was even better to come. For an encore he chose the Intermezzo op116 no4, a dreamy Adagio with which Guy transported us for a magical couple of minutes far away from everyday reality. Utterly spellbinding.
Details are correct at the time of publication - please check with venue before booking.
Sir Paul Ecce Cor Meum is a masterpiece!
- Nellie Apple, Plano, TX. U.S.A.
It was a spectacular evening. McCartney was there through the whole show. My Love, Calico Skies and Junk were fantastic, as was the Ecce Cor Meum. It was good to see McCartney among family and friends, he very much enjoyed the evening and was having a good time. It's good to see that he still can have a good time and forget about his troubles for a moment. I thank him for a great evening and wish him all the best!
- Erna Smulders, Ermelo, The Netherlands
Truly Fab! Only Paul could produce such wonderful music. only hope John and George are enjoying Paul's work of art.
My love to Paul, thanks for you music.
Peace and Love.
- Melanie Muno, USA
I shudder to think that this vapid piece of mindnumbing torture, was representative of Paul's love for his lovely late wife, Linda. If this is true, then I really support Heather Mills' claims that he was intolerably cruel to her, as well. McCartney must have lost his mind to let his name grace this graceless work of trash. In fact, lately, he's kind of trashed, himself. The bigger they are, the harder they fall. Maybe it's time for this old fool to retire. Tooooooo much reefer. His brain is fried, and I cannot believe anyone would allow that music to be presented at the Royal Albert Hall.
- Jillian Townend, USA
