Blade Runner at the Royal Festival Hall

This evening I had the honour of attending a first class orchestral performance of Vangelis’ haunting soundtrack for the multi-layered filmic masterpiece that is Blade Runner. The event took place at the Royal Festival Hall, and it was one of those very rare pieces of art whereby you look at it and think “this could not have been done better”. It could have been differently - Massive Attack, the producers, could have remixed the score and modernised it – but that would have been very risky. Instead the music was performed faithfully to the score. It was majestic, massive and atmospheric, and it included faultless vocal performances.

Vangelis’ score accounts for perhaps 40% of the impact of Blade Runner (and the remaining 60% easily out-ranks many other films, even without music). It aurally paints the atmosphere of the future noir, mish-mash world that we must try to avoid, and what strikes me is the way Vangelis achieved a sound of delicate humanity and vulnerability battling against mechanised, confused but overpowering modernity. He achieved this in the language of music, not words, as a pioneering genius of the synthesizer.

The skill of the orchestra and the work of all involved in this project was outstanding. An artistic success. Modern “artists”, take note: there is no substitute for sheer skill and hard work.

My only aside is that I was shocked to see “3D” from Massive Attack in print on the RFH literature saying the soundtrack was “f**king amazing”. This was totally out of place and the Royal Festival Hall should retain some idea of decency even if 3D cannot.