Miracle Forever Love (X JAPAN song) Golden Globe Theme Rosa (Violet UK song) Anniversary Intermission Amethyst Swan Lake (Tchaikovsky cover) Hero I.V. (X JAPAN song) Bohemian Rhapsody (Queen cover) Without You (X JAPAN song) Kurenai (X JAPAN song) Art of Life (X JAPAN song) Endless Rain (X JAPAN song)
YOSHIKI Welcome to Royal Festival Hall
Yoshiki Classical Anniversary Live London 29/05/14 HD
Yoshiki Classical Golden Globe Theme Live London 29/05/14 HD
Join our web chat from 1:30pm on Wednesday 28th May! Yoshiki is better known in his native Japan as the drummer of rock band X Japan, but last year he took the controversial step of releasing his very own classical album and playing it live across the world. yoshiki album guide
Thursday night will see Yoshiki hit London's Royal Festival Hall as his world tour rolls through Europe after stopping off North America and Mexico, among other destinations.
Unlike the majority of classical artists, Yoshiki is every inch the rock star and pop culture icon. Travelling by private jet, being mobbed at every airport and playing huge shows - classical music doesn't often get this glitzy.
Gallery: Yoshiki Classical - an album guide
Yoshiki will be joining us for an exclusive web chat from 1:30pm on Wednesday 28th May, so make sure you get your questions in the comment section below!....
A Japanese rock star turns his hand to classical music with florid results 2 out of 5 stars The cult Japanese rock artist turned classical performer Yoshiki, pictured earlier this year The cult Japanese rock artist turned classical performer Yoshiki, pictured earlier this year Photo: Getty Images for Flaunt Magazine
By Adam Sweeting
1:46PM BST 30 May 2014
Comments1 Comment
He's largely unknown in the UK, but Yoshiki is a one-man cultural phenomenon in Japan and across the Far East. Formerly the drummer and songwriter with stadium-filling rock band X Japan, his homeland's answer to Queen or Kiss, Yoshiki is now a solo star, but not only in music. Stan Lee created a comic superhero based on him, Japanese banks issue Yoshiki credit cards, and he even has his own Hello Kitty product range called Yoshikitty.
None the less it was only a partially full Festival Hall that greeted the slender and softly-spoken artist as he stepped onstage to join his seven-piece female string section. Eschewing, for the time being, outsized glam-rock theatrics, Yoshiki is currently touring with his first "Classical World Tour", on which he plays new compositions and arrangements of various pieces from his musical portfolio. He studied classical piano from the age of four, and claims to have classical music in his bones.
However, this isn't classical music in the way that Beethoven or Bartok would have understood it. Although Yoshiki has a flair for florid runs up the keyboard, Liberace-style, his pieces are generally based on simple chord patterns and tend to sound gloomy and tearful. Many of them, such as Anniversary (written for the 10th anniversary of the enthronement of the Emperor of Japan), sounded like grandiose rock ballads which had been adapted for strings and piano, as if inviting a karaoke singer to get up and join in. One in particular (I couldn't catch the title) resembled a mash-up of Imagine, Let It Be and Pachelbel's much-plundered Canon in D.
Thus it made more sense when Yoshiki summoned vocalist Katie Fitzgerald to the microphone for selected pieces. One was a thing called Rosa which he'd composed for a movie soundtrack and which sounded like a homage to Jennifer Rush's The Power Of Love, and it paired off nicely with the overwrought Hero, written for an animated film. The only bit of the concert that might just have passed the "classical" test was Yoshiki's piano improvisation on the big theme from Tchaikovsky's Swan Lake.
But the real point of the show was to celebrate the cult of Yoshiki, a fact fully appreciated by the fanatical Japanese fans who'd turned out for the occasion. The concert began with an introductory film about Yoshiki's career, projected on a large screen, and he punctuated the music with autobiographical monologues. He even choked up with emotion in the introduction to Without You, which he dedicated to his father and a former bandmate, both of whom had committed suicide. Related Articles
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His female fans understood, and garlanded him with flowers at the end of the night. In October Yoshiki will be playing with his rock band again at New York's Madison Square Garden, where I reckon you'd get more bang for your buck.
Ну и как закономерный результат после таких нагрузок...
Yoshiki ✔ @YoshikiOfficial
Just arrived in #Tokyo from #London! My dear fans,Sorry I couldn't give you #autographs at the airport.My right hand is in pain..
)♥️❼