Hans Zimmer improved what he could at the O2 arena, and this time the audience really played
“Hooray, concert!” The action of foreign stars in the O2 arena has been waiting for so long. And only now can we report it as really open and talk about the real return of the culture that was closed with the pandemic first and, unfortunately, only as the last to wake up. Hope it lasts.
Live: Hans Zimmer
place: O2 arena, Prague
date: April 20, 2022
setlist: House Atreides (Dune), Mombasa (Beginning), Themyscira / Games / Wonder Woman ’84, What will you do if you don’t save the world? / Flight (Man Of Steel), Duduk Of The North / The Battle / Earth / Honor Him / Now We Are Free (Gladiator), Jack Sparrow / Davy Jones / At Wit’s End / He’s A Pirate (Pirates Of The Caribbean), Rango Suite (Rango), Discombobulate (Sherlock Holmes), Absurdity (Lone Ranger), A Way Of Life (The Last Samurai), I’m Not a Hero / Like a Dog Chasing a Car / Why So Serious? (The Dark Knight), X-MDP (X-Men Dark Phoenix), Supermarine (Dunkirk), Paul’s Dream (Dune), Dust / Coward / Stay / Detach (Interstellar), Circle Of Life / On Lives In You / This Land / King Of Pride Rock (Lví král), Gun Barrel / Cuba Chase / Back To MI6 (No Time To Die), Time (Inception)
Photo gallery
© Tomas Parkan / musicserver.cz
When Hans Zimmer played at the O2 Arena in 2016 for the first time, it was undoubtedly a unique experience. However, even the stellar guests and the crew recording the composer’s first DVD cannot hide the fact that he did not rank among the absolute top of the concert in the evening. The sound was not as clear as it needed to be, everything was a little too loud and a little too electronic. The setlist could have been better, the projections could have been more imaginative, and the speeches between the songs were more cordial. It was his first tour then and it was obvious. One had to be happy mainly for having the opportunity to see this composer live at all, but the experience itself was lukewarm than, for example, Morricone’s visits to the same hall. We are therefore pleased to reveal at the outset that all this has improved in 2022. Although they could still discuss Zimmer’s contribution to film music. After all, consider how many motives from his long-term career you can think of well at first good. “Pirates of the Caribbean”? “The Lion King”? “Beginning”? And further?
© Tomas Parkan / musicserver.cz
On the other hand, there are Ennio Morricone with his westerns, Alan Silvestri with “Avengers”, Danny Elfman with “Spider-Man 2” and a lot of memory worthy of work, the legendary John Williams with “Jurassic Park”, “Harry Potter” or “Alone at Home “, or one of the lesser-known giants, Brian Tyler, with a face that Formula 1 fans can’t enjoy without, can’t imagine a single race … the main melody will pop up in your head right away. Which rarely happens with Zimmer, a layman will probably only remember the examples given above. And his contributions to the series “Call Of Duty”, “Kung Fu Panda” or “The Amazing Spider-man 2” can be smirked. But this is probably the only criticism that can go to his person after the evening of April. According to the artist, the concert started planning exactly 885 days ago. And a lot has happened during that time. Originally, Hans Zimmer was not even supposed to perform on it compared to his previous stages in 2016 and 2017, and the entire tour was to take place without him. The individual stations also moved so long that in the meantime he managed to win his second Oscar a few weeks ago. Almost no one knows about it, because everyone was talking about Will Smith’s face. With a sample from the autumn blockbuster “Duna”, the three-hour performance with a twenty-five-minute break began and the composer returned to it in the second half. And yes, it is definitely one of his most successful and will most likely remain in his setlists.
© Tomas Parkan / musicserver.cz
But there were more pullers. One of them was his personality. Forget the clichés about cold German snouts, Zimmer was nice, praised his colleagues a lot and gave a long speech right from the start about what we all had to endure before this concert could take place. The yellow-blue clothes and the lighting of the stage suggested that he was not indifferent to the situation in Ukraine, as his accompanying band had also undergone changes. The Czech National Symphony Orchestra and Johnny Marr were there. And in the new musician, the musicians from Odessa, Ukraine, took a long place as an ancestor, so the film composer from the battlefield about how important first-hand information is is humanity and closeness to the second. Just a few moments later, he heard the melody from “Wonder Woman 1984”, during which one of the violinists played with such vigor that the horsehair on her bow broke, and during which a woman from the army and a waving flag took the place of the screening, you could tell him maybe blame the pathos. But what else and better can he do in his position? Would it be better to pretend that there was no war, and after one sentimental post on social networks, go back to the swimsuit photos, as many instagram influencers did? At least that’s honestly and it was nice to see that not even such a famous artist lives in a vacuum.
© Tomas Parkan / musicserver.cz
But there was more music from the comics. Someone could have appreciated the rather inconspicuous melodies of “The Man of Steel”, many other viewers pulled out the phones and was about to shoot previews of “The Dark Knight”, which were accompanied by strobes and lights that evoked the police cars, elsewhere painted the stage green again. . That’s when Heath Ledger’s unforgettable Joker performed on stage. And even X-Meni got the word out. The inconspicuous silhouette of a phoenix was added to the screening of the twice-filmed story about the birth of Dark Phoenix. Even such details only indicated how much better this year’s tour is than the previous ones. And even if it would always be useful to list the song with the title of the film at the screening and add some footage directly from the film, it will probably not be easy to arrange due to licensing rights. The chosen compromise with your own shots, from which you will usually know what it is, even if you do not remember the music, so it was a good choice.
© Tomas Parkan / musicserver.cz
But what was the best? Here, too, there was a choice for the strange tastes of the audience. For some, these were Afrobeat-smelling melodies from “The Lion King,” in which a pair of vocalists performed by a father and daughter took their breath away. Flute solos again captivated lovers of historic Japan when the “Last Samurai” was remembered. Thus, even though this film has its staunch opponents, who claim that it has little in common with the real rising sun. Also very impressive was the involvement of the disco ball at the ceiling of the hall, which I light during the demonstration from the space sci-fi “Interstellar” imitated the light reflections of the starry sky. And we must not forget the Bond film “It’s Not Time to Die”, which Zimmer accompanied, but the most famous melodies from the beginning of every film about agent 007 were put together by Monty Norman. But letting something like this sound in the largest Czech hall was an experience. However, despite the uniqueness of the above examples, the author of these lines would have chosen “Pirates of the Caribbean” as the strongest moment. But not thanks to the famous motif “He’s A Pirate”, which today’s thirties know from discos in a reworked version of DJ Tiëst. Here we are talking about the work of Tina Gou, who played the bubbling sea with her cello playing, while the longing loops in the upper positions gave a long motif called “At Wit’s End” to understand that Hans Zimmer can have strong emotions in music. Magnificence, majesty and seating in the amazement of how incredible the symphonic music can sound in the extraordinarily well-sounded O2 arena. And a wonderful contrast to other pieces in the imaginative dramaturgy of the evening.
© Tomas Parkan / musicserver.cz
After all, it is also worth mentioning the fact that the four-time father, for example, did not have a choir behind him at all. Instead, two drummers and more guitar instruments found a place on the stage, as well as plenty of string performers, and the vocalists themselves played prim. And that’s not all, of course. The rock band, rather than the symphony orchestra as such, was much more reminiscent of its collaborators. He then replaced both the guitar, with which he went to the front rows, and the keyboards or the piano, which he also accompanied at the end of his performance. That’s when he let the music from “The Beginning” be heard again and the audience saw it in literally every tone before the concert was over. It was … phenomenal. This is a word that cannot be used in this case. The 64-year-old composer improved everything that could be improved on his current tour and performed a set two classes better than the first in 2016. It was spectacular and finally breathtaking. it would probably start with the big organizer that next time it could be at seven so that visitors can get earlier than in the morning, but taking into account how long we had to wait for a proper, show of a foreign artist at the O2 arena, the remark loses on the strength. Finally a real concert! And after all, at least on the eve of the Comic-Con just a few tens of meters away, which Hans Zimmer unknowingly started. Great timing. That couldn’t have gone any better.