John Cale and the Heritage Orchestra at the Royal Festival Hall, review

By Tim Burrows Published: 2:04PM GMT 08 March 2010

"Hello London, great to see you," John Cale greeted his assembly at the Royal Festival Hall in his rich, mildy clipped Carmarthenshire accent, similar to one competence a next door neighbour in a post office. It was as though his 1960s tarry as the dark, ominous surrealist in the Velvet Underground in New York had never happened.

That was a prolonged time ago, nonetheless so was the theme of his opening here, his 1973 manuscript Paris 1919. Written whilst he was in outcast in LA and fuelled by narcotics and Cold War paranoia, as well as a yearning for European experience, it was an manuscript that, however obscurely, riffed on the Treaty of Versailles whilst sounding similar to a lost partnership with Paul McCartney.

The Halle Orchestra at Bridgewater Hall, Manchester, examination Great walks around London: the South Bank John Wilsons defence for light strain Great walks around London: the City Philharmonia/Salonen at the Royal Festival Hall, examination

Fairly well perceived on the recover it has given turn something of a lost classic. Cale, 67, appears to have elderly only as well. Stood at a keyboard, his white shirt untucked, all about him - his grey fit and tie and unconditional hair, painted blonde and red - was lax nonetheless stately.

He non-stop with Childs Yuletide in Wales, a strain that roots the manuscript in personal experience, consistent autobiographical mental recall with Dylan Thomas, the pretension taken from the poets short story. Behind him, the Heritage Orchestra played subtly and effectively throughout.

Revisited, Half Past France described a vague, insomniac tour by France.

Later he breathed new hold up in to a new agreement of the Velvets Femme Fatale, singing to minimal subsidy whilst the rope took a break. The rope returned, and so did Thomas, the cursed Swansea-born producer and maybe Cales key artist. "Do not go peaceful in to that great night," he growled over mountainous strings during his version of Thomass majority important poem.

During a down and unwashed stone encore, the Welshman and his rope blew the roof tiles off after an dusk of mostly understated, wealthy playing. "Because correct men, at their end, know dim is right."