Richard Clayderman!!

[I took crappy quality grainy photos of Richard Clayderman on my stupid phone and now I can't find them.]

Went to Richard Clayderman's Romantique concert at Straits Quay yesterday!!

Surprisingly, so many people showed up! I mean, I don't mean there wouldn't be any takers; I just didn't think there'd be that many in Penang.

It's been a very, very long time since I've been to a piano recital, and I was super-pumped because I grew up with Clayderman. When I was younger, we used to drive back and forth from KL and my parents would play him on relative repeat on the car radio for four-plus hours.

Given that I didn't spot anyone when I was in London disappointed, I was psyched to see someone famous, that I've known since I was a child, in the flesh.

And that someone was half an hour late.

Dinner was at Dome (one of the cheapest, and not cheap also, at that), and half of the patrons were going to the concert. In brief, we rushed to pay the bill (because they were extremely short-handed), rushed to the bathroom, rushed upstairs, and the concert didn't start until 9pm.

[I told my mom, "When in Rome, do as Romans do. When in Malaysia, be as late as Malaysians are.]

When he came in, though, all was forgiven and everyone clapped and cheered. Since this is not a pop/rock concert, the cheering and wooo-ing were kept to a minimum. There's also the obligatory audience bantering, which, to his credit, was quite hilarious.

[In his introductory speech, he said his English isn't very good, and spoke really, really fast French before ending it with "terima kasih". His best has to be the one announcing the intermission.]

The silly playbook didn't give a setlist, only four forewords (really) by the organiser's partners and biographies on the orchestra players. This is beside the fact that the usage of English in the playbook is sometimes wrong.

Anyway, here's a (rough) list of the pieces played that night. Brackets are the position/order of the pieces, could number more than 15.

1. Ballade pour Adeline (#2)
2. Love Story (sooo not Taylor Swift) (#3)
3. Beethoven's 5th Symphony - variation (#4)
4. there's an extended timpani-like percussion solo by his drummer somewhere at this point
5. Montagues and Capulets (#6)
6. You Raise Me Up (#7)
7. Gershwin's Rhapsody in Blue variation - this one was good! (#8)
8. Spartacus - this happened in the second half, but I can't recall which piece it came after (#9)
9. Titanic Symphony (#10)
10. Medley - Evita, Chariots of Fire, among others (#11)
11. a mamba/rhumba-type number - my mom says it's very nightclub-y (#12)
12. I Dreamed a Dream - Les Miz medley (#13)
13. West Side Story medley (#14)
14. Tribute to Stevie Wonder - which led me to wonder whether Wonder had passed on (just checked: he's still around) and if not, why Stevie and not someone else (#15).

The good ones (#1 and #5) are the only ones I can't find on YouTube. A little help here, please? Though a great load would not go unappreciated :D

And he also bloody gave away SHEET MUSIC!!! The first time he went to the front of the stage waving it, I thought he was kidding but he handed it to this lady sitting some rows from the front. As the show went on, people rushed to the front, so much so that in the second half, children ran up onto the stage proper and snatched it right from his hands!

Also, this very smart girl (not me) used this time to get his autograph. She even got a hug, the lucky kid!

Since we started late, we finished at 10.45pm (i.e., late). During the (quite short) encores, it was almost like a rock concert. People were huddling towards the front of the convention room, holding up their phones, recording the entire thing, never mind that three-quarters of the audience were still seated at the back.

I'll include a photo of the playbook when I get the chance.