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   CLUB SANDWICH 80

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THE HOMECOMING

The 100th concert performance of Paul McCartney's Liverpool Oratorio took place (appropriately) in Liverpool recently. Paul was there, as was co-composer/conductor Carl Davis and our man in the box seat, Geoff Baker

Club Sandwich 80

            Whoever it was who wrote "you can never go home" (Tom Wolfe or Jack Kerouac) obviously didn't come from Liverpool.
            Either that, or he'd never witnessed a Liverpool home-coming.
            He - Mr Don't Look Back - evidently didn't witness the first Macca get backer: in July 1964 when he, George, Ringo and John were paraded through the streets to the cheers of 200,000 before a civic reception in their honour.
            This modern day husband of Lot obviously also missed the November 1984 get back - when Paul was given the Freedom of the City of Liverpool, along with the handy right to drive his sheep through the streets of the town should he feel like it. (Do it.)
            Tom or Jack wasn't in the crowd either back in June 1990, when 60,000 Liverpudlians took over a car park at the King's Dock to watch Paul perform what many up there reckon to be a contender for the best gig of his life.
            Again, where was this blessed luminary of forward travel in June this year when Paul got back as that "pretty nice girl" regally opened LIPA, setting Liverpool in a spin?
            Nowhere to be seen.
            Pity.
            He missed something.
            As did anyone who didn't get to be in Liverpool's Philharmonic Hall on 21 September when Paul McCartney's Liverpool Oratorio came home for its 100th performance.
            This was special return.
            It was special, for starters, in that it happened all so soon. According to the classical buffs that you get to hang out with writing this, the feat of notching up 100 performances of any neoclassical work in five years is extraordinary. Cynics can check that.
            What is altogether more extraordinary is that it wasn't as if Carl Davis and the Liverpool Philharmonic were playing across the street in the pub to clock up performance after performance - this baby's done some serious air miles. In these first five years of its life the Liverpool Oratorio has travelled some 195,000 miles between Liverpool and the concert halls in the 50 cities of the 20 countries and 14 States in which it has been performed.
            The frequent flyer Oratorio has been all over the shop - from Montreal to Munich, New York to Norderstedt, Tokyo to Trento, Christchurch to Curitiba and to places I suspect you don't know where they are. Like Porto Alegre.
            No, it's not. It's in Brazil.
            Anyway, the Oratorio got back; back to the Phil where it was first rehearsed in 1991 and before they spent nine million quid doing up the acoustics of the place (it says here).
            And it "was great. Don't take my learned judgement on that, read the proper critics - like the Liverpool Post's Peter Ronald who called the Oratorio "A roller-coaster of invention" and who ended his critique thus: "Bach, Mozart and Beethoven are immortal, in that their music will be played for ever. And so will the music of James Paul McCartney."
            But what was greater was this: many among the couple of thousand Scousers who sat in the Phil for the 100th performance were - like Paul - remembering how, when they were school kids, they'd be taken to this hall to hear a performance of The Messiah or some other great work. This performance of the Liverpool Oratorio brought back those schooldays but it was different, better.
            Back then, in their youth, they listened to Beethoven's oratorio, or Handel's or Bach's. This night they had one of their own. An oratorio that was Liverpool's. And an oratorio that the great port had once again shipped to the world.
            There was great pride in their eyes for that. And in Paul's.
            And that's why you can go home again.