Ray Davies at Meltdown 2011

This was, for me, a mixed bag, and I suspect that that is not the reaction of most of the audience in the Royal Festival Hall last night (unmitigated joy was nearer the mark for everyone near me). We certainly got what we were promised – a setting of Village Green Preservation Society with full orchestra and chorus, along with Ray Davies and his usual band, followed by some of Davies’ other works – but my question is whether what we got always served the music.

The most successful part of the evening was undoubtedly the performance of the Village Green material (not in the record order, by the way). The page on which I was taking my notes is littered with “GREAT orchestration” and “fab use of choir”, with “Last of the Steam Powered Trains”, “Sitting by the Riverside” and “All of My Friends Were There” particular favourites. The inclusion of the mighty 65-piece London Philharmonic as well as the 94 singers of the Crouch End Festival Chorus produced an unbelievable sound; as the BF observed, not always subtle and not suited to reproduction on a recording – it was simply too much for that – but extremely well suited to an unrepeatable live experience. It was also nice that this was not a ponderous take on a classic: the audience was encouraged to take out their phones and cameras for “People Take Pictures of Each Other”, lending some very appropriate camera flashes throughout that piece. And they weren’t scared to play with the material, with “Walter” especially given a very different arrangement to the record.

It was largely the second half which did not convince, and I think “Days” best illustrates my complaint of the song suffering because someone felt that the whole of the orchestra and choir had to be used at every opportunity. It began quietly with Davies and band, and I was delighted, thinking that they were tailoring the setting to the tune for optimal effect, but he did half the song, broke off as if he were finished and then after a round of applause it all kicked back in again, tutti and rather overblown. I thought this a shame, really, as the quiet setting was far more special. The conductor of my old choir says something about there being nothing more thrilling than a large choir singing a piece in unison very quietly, and I think that that observation boils down to the feeling produced by a big number of people all concentrating together so that you can hear a pin drop. That was the effect that was being created in the quiet section of “Days” last night, and I felt a bit cheated that they weren’t prepared to trust the audience to go with it.

I don’t mean to belittle what was in places a fantastic show, or Simon Hale’s orchestration of that show. I was delighted by the bombast that could be produced by the sheer numbers on stage for songs such as “Victoria” and “You Really Got Me” (the latter could be the most preposterous thing I’ve ever seen), and the choir was used sparingly and devastatingly as the punctuation in “Dead End Street”. But a leaner treatment probably serves the bulk of the work better than the enormous mass of musicians last night; one of the best tunes was the encore of “Come Dancing”, performed by the band alone.

See comments for setlist.