It was Sunday the 21st of July, approximately quarter
to eight. I was standing in front of Prague’s O2 Arena among thousands of other
fans of folk-Gypsy-Jewish music and great Canadian poetry and I was waiting to
get through the ticket control to experience an evening I had been looking
forward to a long time. It was the day of the third concert of the Canadian songwriter,
poet and novelist Leonard Cohen in the Czech capital. Cohen’s first Prague
concert took place in 2008 and the second just a year after that, and having been
present during the last, it was a promising event for me as a great fan of
Mister Leonard. Although I knew the concert would be an outstanding and
exceptional experience, I was still given more that I had expected.
The atmosphere in the O2 arena was amazing from the
very beginning. Never before
have I seen a standing ovation the moment the performer stepped onto the stage
for the first time. The audience showed its admiration and appreciation for the
musician and applauded him and his great band even when no string was plucked
and no voice had begun to please the listeners’ ears yet. The concert
opened with the songs “Dance Me to the End of Love” and “The Future” – the same
as during the last couples of Cohen’s tours. Also, Mister Leonard forgot the
lyrics a few times and the audience could see that it would take the band a
while to get into the mood. This made me worry for the first and the last time
during the concert, but everything changed with a fabulous bandurria intro to the song "Who by Fire" and it was with
a sequence of songs from Cohen's latest album "Old Ideas" that he
seemed to have gained confidence. After that, the concert got better with every
song and verse.
The concert was divided into two parts; however, the
two sets of encores took approximately the same time as one of these halves. In
total, Cohen and his band spent more than three hours on the stage and almost
all the essential songs were played. It was really pleasant that Cohen’s
probably best known song “Hallelujah” which can be heard every day on radio in
many different cover versions was included in the concert’s playlist, as by
chance, and gave room for other, less well-known songs.
The peak of the concert was an acoustic set during
which (the normally only singing) Cohen played the guitar and which ended with
a great, but very sad song "The Partisan". Its lyrics are half in
English and half in French; it deals with the life of a partisan during war and
the leaving of his family and the loss of his friends. After the song, the
screen behind the band turned red – that was a very moving moment for everyone.
I have been to a few great concerts in my life - I
have experienced Ian Anderson, Mark Knopfler as well as Bob Dylan and all these
musicians were really great. Yet in their cases the evening was
"just" a great concert; Cohen’s performance was simply a gift to all his
listeners. No-one really knows if it was Mister Leonard’s last visit to Prague
– but if it was, I was honoured to have been a part of it... And if it was not,
then next time I am definitely buying myself first-row tickets!
- - Jan Jakšič
