Beck brings bombast and theatre to second night of his Royal Albert Hall performances

“I want to be the phantom of my own opera,” exclaims Beck, as he stands below the window of Royal Albert Hall’s Grand Organ, outwardly querying how it would be possible to reach it. It’s not long since tonight’s collaborators – the BBC Concert Orchestra – have vacated the staggered stage, and the multi-hyphenate has taken the opportunity to have a wander. “This will heal your seventeenth chakra,” he jests, before testing the gong that remains amid a sea of abandoned stands and manuscripts: he will later, during inevitable closer ‘Loser’, stand atop the conductor’s platform to scatter said papers in another move of the kind of oddball whimsy fully expected of his three-decade-strong presence. 

It’s this sense of ease that most typifies tonight’s performance, the second of two at the iconic London venue. Slipping in that he’s a long-time attendee of orchestras (unsurprising, of course, given his classical nepobaby status – his father being arranger and composer David Campbell), there’s not a giant leap to be made tonight from much of his discography: predictably, the setlist leans towards 2002’s ‘Sea Change’ and 2014’s ‘Morning Phase’. The latter in particular offers some particularly special moments; a twinkly ‘Blue Moon’ and a stunning crescendo crowning ‘Waking Light’. His ‘Everybody’s Got To Learn Sometime’ cover is one of four, with two Scott Walker numbers: “This is my £200,000 Scott Walker karaoke,” he suggests, before the second, a suitably bombastic ‘Montague Terrace (In Blue)’.