10th April 2010

A spring sun is setting over Hammersmith. The sunglasses of people walking westward reflect a bright orange flare. Short-sleeved men and short-skirted women up their pace to get home before the April night spreads its clear-skied chill. Couples who have survived a grim winter of squalling rain and weekend nights of Strictly-Come-X-Factor’s-Got-Talent-On-Ice mooch in silence back to their flats. New couples swing held hands looking forward to a summer of chilled wine in the park.

I sit down on the upper deck of the Number 10 bus and it rumbles towards Kensington. Past the offices of Universal Records, the most successful record company in the world, now occupying the same space as a seventies record exec’s drinks cabinet. Times and commerce have changed.

Through ‘Little Tehran’ where the Iranian takeaway delivery riders start their mopeds and roll away with a shake and a rattle.

An evening breeze rustles the headscarves of Kensington’s well-to-do ladies and Muslim women. Twenty yellow cagouled, sore footed tourists carry their heavy legs past the closing shops, whilst bag wielding bargainistas are cajoled out of glass doors as shop managers lock up for the night.

Runners spanning an evolution-flouting range of body shapes barrel, potter, bounce, jog and run their way through last minute preparations for the London Marathon.

Tonight isn’t about running though. It’s not about shops or fast food or sunsets. It’s about a simple musical proposition; the greatest composer of all time at one of the greatest venues in the world.

The elegant red brick and sandstone rotunda up ahead is known as the Royal Albert Hall. Robbie Williams swung here when he was winning. He was pretty good from what I can remember.

For my sins I watched sturdily built chanteuse Alison Moyet here, supported by the briefly popular Curiosity Killed The Cat. They were wretched.

I watched open-mouthed as surf-friendly, soul voiced lap steel maestro Ben Harper did the classic band leader thing here and with a sequence of clenched fists silenced his band one by one, then pushed away his microphone and sang unaided to the whole hall. That was impressive.

My grandfather proudly boomed his musical limitations here as he sang Christmas carols employing only one note. At the age of eight it was remarkable how moving Ding Dong Merrily On High was when sung in his singular tone known to the family as the ‘key of doom’.

The Tindersticks glummed here as they tiptoed their way through a set that deftly avoided anything that you could term crowd pleasing. I’ve stood in the DJ booth and watched Zane Lowe dazzle a crowd here, and seen The Killers bring Vegas, complete with palm trees and unwelcome saxophone intrusions to its stage.

On one extraordinary evening Chris and I attended the George Harrison tribute concert here. No-one knew what to expect, but the presumption was of a birthday honours list of rock ‘n’ roll knights performing the greatest hits of the Harrison canon. Surprise it was then to many in the crowd when the compere, one Eric Clapton, announced that the show would be in two halves. The second half would celebrate the music that George made, the first would celebrate the music that he loved. And unlike the majority of the audience, George’s passion was for the music of India. I have no doubt that the hour of Anoushka and Ravi Shankar that we witnessed that night was of the very highest calibre, but it was unfortunately wasted on me.

And judging by the faces of the Foo Fighters in the next door box, it was a little wasted on them too – in particular their drummer Taylor Hawkins. Taylor is a man who could look fidgety in his sleep. In interviews his eyes dart, expressions flit across his face as briefly as the thoughts to which they’re attached. He was, one presumes, murder to teach. As he rocked from side to side during the sitar solos it looked like he would explode like some Loony Tunes rocket, lit but then tethered for too long. The evening concluded with Tom Hanks singing the Lumberjack Song and British folk obscurity Joe Brown leading a band of megastars on banjo. That was, well, bizarre.

But tonight I’m hoping to finally witness a musical experience worthy of the magnificent surroundings.

Tonight we are going to see a man who can take five otherwise unremarkable notes and put them in a sequence which paralyses me with delight. He is an eighty-two year old Italian, winner of one honorary Oscar, and wrongful loser of five real ones.

That he is the greatest cinematic composer of all time is beyond doubt. He may not have the grandeur of Williams, the bravado of Barry or the bombast of Bernstein, but across the fifty years of his career he has written, conducted and recorded a range of music so extraordinary and prolific that even he himself can’t list it all. His influence is so all-encompassing it’s impossible to plot. Maybe he’s the greatest composer of music alive on the planet full stop. Personally, I’m backing him.

Currently he is walking onto the stage some three hundred feet away from us. His name is Ennio Morricone, and he is a genius.