Herbert Grönemeyer – Live in Luzern

Herbert Grönemeyer conducting the Lucerne Symphony Orchestra and pianist Anna Vinnitskaya was an incredible experience between humility, nervousness and genius. A moment of happiness for the audience.

Herbert Grönemeyer has been on stage for 40 years and you would think that almost nothing could shake him. When he steps onto the stage of the KKL Luzern on 28.11.2021, he takes a deep breath and from my seat in the second row, the nervousness doesn’t look fake. There’s a whole symphony orchestra sitting in front of him, a full house behind him and he has to deliver. I think “good luck” but also “what could possibly go wrong, they’re all professional musicians”. The whole thing begins with Tchaikovsky and his Slavonic March, which was premiered at a benefit concert for the Red Cross in 1876 and tells the story of the war of liberation of the Serbs against the Ottoman Empire. At the end, Tchaikovsky really lets it rip with lots of brass and the Tsar’s Anthem. If you sit right at the front, a piece of an orchestra stretches out much more and the low notes are very present. In addition, the many plucked interludes are clearly perceptible. Even in the concert hall, I doubt that the audience at the back can hear it the way I can at the front. This is what it should ideally sound like when you sit in front of the soundboard. The recording by Matthias Georg Kendlinger doesn’t seem to be bad and somehow comes close to what you hear. Nevertheless, a concert hall with its volume and lively instruments is incomparable. The second piece is a suite arranged by Herbert Grönemeyer’s buddy and band member since 1982 – Alfred Kritzer. Elements from Mensch and also from the American feature film “The American” by Anton Corbijn with George Clooney can be found in it. I even saw the movie in the cinema back then. The film music is by Herbert Grönemeyer, which I didn’t know until now. So far so good. At some point in the middle I think that we’re listening to something very simple and then I realize that it’s an excerpt from “Mensch”. How simply pop music works __ You can get close to Herbert Grönemeyer again in a really long interview. “Die Zeit” is making a podcast called “Alles gesagt”. Jochen Wegner and Christoph Amend interview him for over 5:15 hours. Herbert Grönemeyer talks about Germany, his life and his career, about his beginnings in Bochum and his years in London, about encounters with Willy Brandt and Nelson Mandela, Bono and Nastassja Kinski, about his skepticism towards Spotify, his passion for cars, his family and friends, his musical role models, about his difficult relationship with tabloid media – and about his last concert, which he wants to play at the age of 89. All in German.