POP MUSIC REVIEWS : ‘Tubular Bells 2’: In Search of a Picture

The most fun to be had at Mike Oldfield’s John Anson Ford Theatre concert on Friday was guessing how many times he’d change guitars before finishing a piece. The maximum seemed to be six and counting.

Oldfield’s guitar swaps, a brief appearance by a quartet of costumed bagpipers and impressive lighting of the landscape behind the stage supplied the evening’s principal visual appeal. The attractions of the music--selections from his current “Tubular Bells 2” album, a melodic restructuring of his enormously popular 1973 composition--were more problematic. Performed in often uncertain fashion by Oldfield, a small rock rhythm section and a 45-piece orchestra and choir, “Tubular Bells 2” was atmospheric music in search of a picture. Its motivic repetitions, provocative on the original piece in the early ‘70s, sounded like rudimentary spinoffs from Steve Reich and Philip Glass; its orchestral rock resonances had a noticeably dated quality. At its best, it was attractive film-style music; at its worst, it verged dangerously close to New Age Muzak.

The performance was not aided by erratic sound, which rarely provided any significant presence for the orchestral parts of the music. In fact, the inner ensemble voicings and occasionally striking harmonic changes--the most intriguing aspects of “Tubular Bells 2”--are far better heard on the recording than they were in this inadequately rehearsed and poorly executed production.