Candlelight: Queen vs. ABBA Tribute

Candlelight: Queen vs. ABBA Tribute sets two pop songbooks against one another and hands both to a string quartet playing by candlelight. The two bands are woven through the programme rather than divided into separate halves, so the contrast runs as an argument across the whole performance instead of arriving as a scheduled face-off.

The pairing works because the two catalogues fail in opposite directions once the vocals come out. Queen's writing is operatic and sectional, built from stacked harmony and abrupt turns of tempo and key, which gives four string players a great deal to divide between them. ABBA's is compact and melodically ruthless, full of countermelodies buried under the production that a viola or second violin can finally bring into the open.

Played on strings, both lose their studio armour and keep their bones. Candlelight takes away the arena scale these songs are usually heard at and replaces it with proximity, which flatters the writing more than volume ever did. What emerges is less a tribute than a comparison, with the room left to decide which songbook holds up better unamplified.