Yes - Symphonic Live

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DVD Reviews of Yes - Symphonic Live

DVD Review: At last, Yes on film hits the heights...
Summary: 5 Stars

The occasion, as most reading this will know, is the 2001 Yes Symphonic Tour - in this case a concert in Amsterdam. The fact that the shoot took place in Europe adds to the enjoyment, as audiences in this part of the hemisphere tend actually to listen to music rather than to yell and scream while it is happening. This removes most irritating aural distractions from the listener's perspective, and avoids elimination problems at the production end.

The idea of Yes appearing with an orchestra was greeted with understandable scepticism in some quarters. The possibilities of overkill, mismatch or descent into musak were enough to make anyone who cares about their music nervous. Fortunately, composer Larry Groupe handles arrangements of classic material with taste and restraint, and the young European Festival Orchestra under Wilhelm Kietel was well settled in by the time this was filmed. Indeed they seem to be thoroughly enjoying themselves. It is good to be able to hear what they add. This was not always possible as a member of the audience.

The highlights of the concert are undoubtedly superb versions of three 20-minute Yes epics: `Close To The Edge', `Gates of Delirium' (from `Relayer') and `Ritual' (from `Tales From Topographic Oceans'). The playing and the mix are top notch here. What's more, director Aubrey Powell understands the need to ensure that visual and musical events are in synch. Obvious maybe, but not evident on past Yes video outings. Those who dismiss Yes as sound and fury signifying little might not be entirely assuaged by these performances, but is difficult for some of us not to be moved by the grandeur, ambition and architecture of their sound - even if we may have moved beyond the moment in time that was progressive rock in other ways.

`And You And I', `Long Distance Runaround' (with a rather incongruous cinematic orchestral prelude) and `Starship Trooper' also come off well, even if they emphasise the fact that bassist Chris Squire's dress sense is as laughably misguided as ever. Steve Howe provides a good acoustic guitar interlude with the Spanish strains of `Mood For A Day' and his arrangement of the second movement of Vivaldi's Lute Concerto in D major. The latter makes me slightly anxious, as it doesn't really do justice to the original. But it has a few interesting harmonic quirks to enliven interest. The new material (from the `Magnification', album, 2001) is mixed in its live realisation. The longish `In The Presence Of' works well, especially the driving coda. Only the cloying opening theme lets it down. `Don't Go' is a frivolous add-on, frankly. The title track sounds pretty good here, but it lost its accents and embellishments in the actual concerts. The ability to mix the orchestra better on this DVD/video production helps enormously.

At the end, Yes throw in a surprise `Owner Of A Lonely Heart' (without orchestra) as well as the ubiquitous `All Good People' and `Roundabout', on which the orchestra re-appear to jive engagingly in the background. Steve Howe is clearly none-too-keen on his role in the Trevor Rabin-era material, and who can blame him? For the most part he strums, allowing keyboards sideman Tom Brislin - who plays wonderfully throughout - to adapt the mid-song solo through some judicious synth pitch bending. Howe returns at the end to add something much more guitaritic, but in his own style.

This DVD features the entire concert, Jon Anderson's amusingly off-kilter between-song patter included. There are visual augmentations available, but thankfully you can switch these distractions off, put your feet up and focus on the playing of all concerned. And with a set list like this, who wouldn't want to?

One final, pedantic point. Though the word symphonic is used carelessly as a synonym for everything involving a larger-than-chamber orchestra these days, this is in fact `Yes orchestral'. There have been laboured attempts to find sonata form in their longer works. But everyone knows that they were not written with that intent, and the symphonic moniker misses the point. Yes at their best (on the three classic albums from which over an hour of this superb film is taken) are powerful and inventive in their own right. They do not need misplaced attributions from other genres to make the credible. Yes may look aged, but their sound has continuing vitality. Check it out.

Description of Yes - Symphonic Live

Classic Rock Music CDs

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