Deep Purple in Vienne: Orchestra works
On July 27, Deep Purple were in Vienne, near Lyon, for what should be their only concert in France this year.
It was part of their “Songs That Built Rock” tour, with orchestra.
The venue is really unique. The “Théâtre antique” of Vienne was built in the 1st century AD. It’s open air, and the sound is perfect!
The supporting act was a guitarist alone. He did a very nice job. The only thing is that he didn’t say his name (or I didn’t hear him). When he came, he just said “I’m not Deep Purple!”.
If anyone knows his name, please let me know in the comments.
Then at 9PM, Deep Purple came on stage, preceded by the Neue Philharmonie Frankfurt Orchestra who played a nice intro, inspired by Smoke On the Water.
They opened then with a great version of Highway Star (the organ solo with the orchestra behind sounds wonderful).
That was nice to hear Woman From Tokyo and Knocking At Your Back Door back in the setlist (with the orchestra, a different tuning and a bit slower, it sounded really so powerful).
Lazy with the “battle” between Morse and the violonist at the end was great.
Perfect Strangers, one step down, definitely sounds darker.
The Well-Dressed Guitar…well it was written to be played with an orchestra so it was perfect!
And how impressive is the riff of Smoke On The Water with the orchestra behind! This is really a must-see!
The crowd was really on fire (around 6000 people)!
Really a great night with Deep Purple! Thank you!
Cyril
Setlist:
Highway Star
Hard Lovin’ Man
Maybe I’m a Leo
Strange Kind of Woman
Rapture of the Deep
Woman From Tokyo
Contact Lost
When a Blind Man Cries
The Well Dressed Guitar
Knocking at Your Back Door
Lazy
No One Came
Perfect Strangers
Space Truckin’
Smoke on the Water
Hush
Black Night
just 6000 people for a tour with an orchestra is not that much…was it sold out?
August 3rd, 2011 at 19:30Hi Roberto!
August 3rd, 2011 at 21:57No it wasn’t sold out. I think the capacity of the theatre was around 6500-7000.
Roberto, as far as I know the capacity of the venue in this particular structure is around 7.000.
August 3rd, 2011 at 22:04So, 6,000 is a big number. Generally Purple’s orchestral shows keeps on being sold out, if we don’t count several gigs in the USA.
Let’s see what happens at London’s O2 Arena, as it seems to be the most important show of the whole tour.
TicketMaster says there’re only some 150 tickets left unsold for Purple’s O2 Arena show in London:
http://www.ticketmaster.co.uk/event/3500468C98B23E39?artistid=734897&majorcatid=10001&minorcatid=1
Don’t be worried, they just do that 😉
August 3rd, 2011 at 22:13I mean, 250
August 3rd, 2011 at 22:13“Generally Purple’s orchestral shows keeps on being sold out”, yes, I know, this is why I was surprised…in Verona,where I was, there were 13.000 people…the band was on fire and the place wonderful…I can’t think of a better Purple gig this year…how many people O2 Arena can hold?
August 5th, 2011 at 12:30@5 the O2 arena holds around 20.000 people and there are 297 tickets left unsold currently…it would be certenly sold out…hope they will not publish the montreux 2011 dvd (recording cameras were there),we have ’96 and ’06 version yet…hope they will choose Verona or O2 gig…
August 7th, 2011 at 23:45Just to say that the guitarist who played before Deep Purple is Derrin Nauendorf, an australian.
August 10th, 2011 at 15:23Concerning the “not sold out” concert in Vienne, Deep Purple came 3 times around Lyon in the last 4 years, it may be the reason why…
At the same time, this is going to be the only concert in France.
Anyway great concert in a great place!
Another thing I forgot to mention in my review is the fact that the “riff” of Pictures of Home was played at the end of the show, during Black night. I wouldn’t be surprised if this song would be added to the setlist for the concerts at the end of the year. I’m sure that it would really be perfect with the orchestra.
Re London O2 gig – TicketMaster are not the only agent. Also, I’ve been monitoring TicketMaster web-site since the pre-sale and I’m not convinced that the ‘available tickets’ are the only ones left. I’ve yet to see official sellers list any tickets for the upper tier yet and quite often Ticketmaster seem to sell less than 10 tickets per day (you can monitor the tickets on sale in each block), although greater numbers were sold in the first few days.
I’m going to this gig and really hope that they can shift most of the tickets but I do worry that there might be a lot of empty spaces.
August 11th, 2011 at 22:39297 tickets left, 3 or 4 months before the show, seemed to be too few to be true. I hope it will be sold out.
August 13th, 2011 at 18:47