NYT: Precious Solitude With 160 to Help (Elton John benefit concert)

[pagerbear]

A harpist plays an arpeggio. An additional 98 orchestra members sit in the bleachers above the stage, waiting their turn. A 62-member choir bides its time. A rock band is set up below them. And there sits a man at a piano, singing, "I need you to turn to when I lose control/You're my guardian angel who keeps out the cold."

Who but Elton John could get away with this nonsense?

At Radio City Music Hall on Tuesday night Sir Elton gave the first of the five concerts he is to play there, with his band engorged by musicians from the Royal Academy of Music in London and the Juilliard School, along with singers from the expanded Brooklyn Youth Chorus. (The concert raised money for scholarships at the two schools.) This was not a night devoted to musical understatement: as Sir Elton barreled through his catalog, he was shameless and bombastic and - for the most part - irresistible

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But by the time he returned for an encore, singing a furious, choir-enhanced version of "Don't Let the Sun Go Down on Me," there was nothing to be done but sit there and admire the spectacle. The finale was "Your Song," an ear-busting duet with Renée Fleming. "I know it's not much, but it's the best I can do," she sang to him, and who could root against a couple this ridiculous?


http://www.nytimes.com/2004/07/15/arts/music/15john.html?adxnnl=1&adxnnlx=1089901825-yfKw633lRc+7NRpzakDxRQ