Shivers of Enjoyment – The 60 Years of Music Tour

Maestro Ennio Morricone

Stadthalle, Vienna, Austria, 2017-02-08

Already the title of the tour of this guy is something to melt in your mouth: The 60 Years of Music Tour. Okay, he himself is close to ninety years old, but let’s say it’s not common, that someone at this age still tours the world. So this concert got us even nervous.

Because the guy is called Maestro Ennio Morricone. One of the biggest film musicians who has wandered this world ever. For over 500 movies, he wrote the score. In 2007, he became the Honorary Award for his life’s work, and in 2016 finally the Academy Award for the best original score, “The Hateful Eight”. A man, who has achieved everything. A man with great humour, even though he prefers to be somewhere else: “My life is music. I think and work on it at all time. Unfortunately even I have to make telephone calls and talk to other people. Then I have to leave the world of music for short.”

And then he enters the stage, after the two choirs and the Czech National Orchestra have took their places. The set is divided in blocks of 2-4 songs, that belong together thematically. Starting of with the wonderful “The Legend of the Pianist”, they make a walk through the whole career of Morricone. The sentimentally intense songs like “Cinema Paradiso” or “Deborah’s Theme” could bring you close to tears, while uplifting pieces like “The Ecstasy Of Gold” or the first encore “Abolisson” give you shivers of enjoyment. Anyway the concert is just so huge, you can’t even count the people on stage or decide where to look. The peaceful harp, the breathtaking choirs, the playful mallet percussions and the man in front of them, whose music they perform, it all is just mindblowing.

After four encores, the Maestro takes his final bow, and leaves us impressed by the big melodies that get stuck in the heart and the small big man behind them.