Konsertrecension: Rufus Wainwright shines best when he sings other peoples songs

”We are here tonight to celebrate it's 20 years since my career started”, says Rufus Wainwright, with a wry smile a few songs into the concert, and you can almost see the ironic quotation marks around the word career. As he had hoped for even more.

In a way I can understand him. Wainwright had – has, still, I suppose, the prerequisites to turn through even wider. The voice is brilliant, with a wide range, but for the sake of being so technically perfect that all personality is lost.

also in the musical expression: he and the band can go from the Beatles pop to unexpectedly straddled the rock, from the sprawling vaudeville to straight monotony. He is, when he is in that mood, also have a right charming and outspoken mellansnackare, as when he is faced with the ”Sally Ann” proudly declares - and the grandeur of that Leonard Cohen love song or the face of the ”Beauty mark” in just a short sequence to open the door to the home of childhood, how as an aspiring musician was to grow up with a famous – and rather critical – the folk singer to the mother.

at the same time, two decades into his career, still slightly oförlöst and applicants with the extravagante Montreal-singer. He wants so much, so much, so much, that everything is often overflows in all directions and edges, and the vessels that are going to catch up all the talent – the songs – are not enough.

talking to several of the evening's biggest highlights are actually versions of other artists ' songs. When Wainwright gets a clearer framework to keep within from Joni Mitchell, The Beatles, and his father Loudon Wainwright III is that he can focus on ”just” be a singer. Then he is brilliant.

The stripped-down, yet dramatic, version of Mitchell's ”Both sides, now” is so great and beautiful that it fills every last corner of the Concert hall.