Veteran German composer and band leader James Last today admitted that he is in denial over his farewell appearances.
The 85-year-old, who has sold more than 100 million records, will perform his final UK concerts at the end of this month. In a career spanning half a century, Last enjoyed 52 hit albums in the UK.
He told the Standard: “I don’t like to say ‘the final’. I hate it. I like making music. But we had a talk with my management and they were telling me I have to realise that I’m 86 years old this year.” The conductor, whose trademark “happy music” of pop tunes by the likes of Burt Bacharach and popular classical music by Strauss and Mozart was embraced particularly enthusiastically in Britain in the Seventies and Eighties, said it was “most important” to bow out properly here.
“British audiences have been fantastic,” he added. His two concerts at the Royal Albert Hall will be his 89th and 90th at the venue. “It’s very special for us,” he said. “My whole life is a memory.” Some members of his orchestra have been with him since the start.
Last thinks his huge success is because “people believed in us to play the music from the heart - it was just the orchestra playing honestly”.
Tickets from £40 to £70 at ticketline.co.uk and the Royal Albert Hall box office.
