(c) Wiesbadener Kurier by Peter Müller

Sting without a beard – and with a lot of bite...

In front of 14,500 enthusiastic fans, Sting delivered a magnificent performance in Wiesbaden on Sunday evening. An energetic and powerful concert – the quieter sounds were almost neglected.

An orange sunset, an atmospheric open-air backdrop, and music legend Sting on stage – a perfect mix for a magnificent concert evening on Sunday evening at the Bowling Green in front of the Wiesbaden Kurhaus.

Start with your biggest hit and build slowly and steadily – that's the motto for the evening's drama. "Every Breath You Take" is the powerful opener, and a sea of raised hands greets Sting.

From the very first song, he sets the tone: it's rock. Two songs from his solo albums are followed by the raucous "Driven To Tears," a Sting composition from his time with the Police.

If fans were wondering whether Sting still has it in him before the concert presented by hr1, there's not the slightest doubt after this performance. Vocally and musically in top form, backed by a fantastic band, including his long-time guitarist Dominic Miller, the 64-year-old plays an energetic, captivating concert and appears more powerful on stage than ever.

Even though Sting has surprised audiences over the decades with fine albums, sometimes more acoustic, sometimes more jazzy, he lets it rip in Wiesbaden on his 2016 summer tour. And delights his fans with skilful announcements in German.

The years of his Police era from 1977 to 1984 are strongly represented with eight songs, almost half of the program. When asked why this is so, Sting answers simply in an interview: "Well, I wrote them, so I play them."

He's clearly having fun. "So Lonely," "Every Little Thing She Does Is Magic," and "Message In A Bottle" – that these songs are more than thirty years old isn't noticeable in any note. Fresh and powerful, they sweep off the stage, often more vibrant than on record. Sting, beardless again, shows plenty of musical grit. Every Police song breathes the spirit of the post-punk era and isn't the least bit dated. The audience loves it.

"Roxanne" also belongs in this category: the very first Police single from 1978, which immediately reached number 12 in the UK charts. The song about love for the prostitute Roxanne begins as lively as ever, then transitions into Bill Withers' "Ain't No Sunshine (When She's Gone)" in the groovy middle section, before returning to Roxanne again.

In addition to the particularly successful Sting songs "The Hounds of Winter" and "Englishman in New York," in which Bowling Green sings with particular enthusiasm, the program also includes two Peter Gabriel/Genesis covers, decorative reissues from the "Rock Paper Scissors" tour that Sting and Peter Gabriel undertook through North America in 2016.

The only downside of the evening was that Sting's big, gentle songs were somewhat neglected. They could have used a bit more exposure, space, and intensity.

With the first sounds of the evening, the increased entry controls and the long lines at the entrances and concession stands are forgotten: once again, the Bowling Green area provided a memorable evening in a wonderful atmosphere. The concert in Wiesbaden sent 14,500 happy, euphoric Sting (and Police) fans into the night.

(c) Hessenschau by Konnie Keller

Sting still trumps...

Sting looks back at Wiesbaden's Bowling Green, especially on his Police days – and, with little nostalgia, rocks the Hessian capital.

The family resemblance is significant, both visually and vocally: Joe Sumner, son of Gordon Matthew Thomas Sumner, warms up the audience a bit before his father's concert at Wiesbaden's Bowling Green. The applause for Sumner is friendly; but it must also be strange to be standing in the shadow of such a famous, revered father – 14,500 people came this time to hear the older Sumner, who calls himself Sting. Joe Sumner certainly brought some pretty, slightly rock-infused mainstream singer/songwriter music. Sting, on the other hand, can string together mega-hit after mega-hit for almost two hours and only needs a sip of water once in between.

"Good evening, ladies and gentlemen," he says politely, in German. And it would never happen to him – unlike many other superstars – that he doesn't know where he's performing. The Wiesbaden sky is almost consistently cloudless blue, the head of security fortunately only calls once before the concert, and the Kurhaus is bathed in the glorious evening sun just as Sting begins to sing "Fields of Gold."

A new album is scheduled for release in November, but the current tour is dominated by good old, indestructible Police songs. Sting starts at 8:00 sharp with "Every Breath You Take," and before the encores, he ends with the popular "Roxanne," into which he uniquely weaves Bill Withers' "Ain't No Sunshine." Elsewhere, he segues from the Genesis song "Dancing With the Moonlit Knight," with its iconic lyric "selling England by the pound," to "Message in a Bottle." If this combination contains a political statement, perhaps about Brexit, the Brit Sting certainly doesn't let it be known.

As always at his performances, he is casual, friendly (perhaps with an ironic smile at times), unobtrusive, duelling—for example, in the guitar-pattering "Driven to Tears"—with his long-time guitarist Dominic Miller, praising and lauding his musicians. But he's also seemed less experienced and was more generous with his encores than on Sunday evening in Wiesbaden.

Sting has also toured as a lute player and singer, among other things; this time he seems to be looking back primarily on rocking Police numbers. But he hasn't been wearing the Police label for a long time; over the decades, he's accumulated a collection of strong Sting songs, of which there could have been a few more on this evening. The roaring singer was featured more often than the finely nuanced one, the diabolical "Hounds of Winter" howler more prominently than the "Mad About You" charmer.

But once again, it was evident in Wiesbaden that Sting's unique selling point is (still) his voice, which is both bright and characteristically rough and edgy. He lets it soar, he lets it rip. At 64, he can still boast with it.

Autumn will show whether he can still write captivating and rousing songs. Sting announces a rocking record; it's possible that he's already warming up for his next tour, which won't just be a retrospective tour.

(c) Feuilleton-Redakteurin by Sylvia Staude

Sting rocks in Wiesbaden - His new album follows in the fall...

Wiesbaden. Since the death of Motörhead's Lemmy, Gordon "Sting" Sumner has definitively become the last singer-bassist in rock. This may not do justice to his true range, from reggae to jazz and fusion to classical forays. But when a regular Sting album is released this fall for the first time in 13 years, producer Martin Kierszenbaum promises that Sting will "rock like he did on 'Synchronicity,' the last Police album from 1983." On Sunday, 12,000 fans at the "Bowling Green" in downtown Wiesbaden were given a taste of what that means.

And there's no new material to be heard yet. On the contrary: Sting will spend almost half of the evening performing old Police songs, both the obvious ones (like "So Lonely") and the lesser-known ones (like "Next to You"). And listen: They sound more energetic than they've sounded in a long time – a bit slower in tempo, but all the more powerful when guitarist Dominic Miller (introduced as "Herr Dominik Müller") steps up to the distortion or wah pedal. So, right from the start, "Every Breath You Take" is finally in no danger of being misunderstood as a love song.

The author is 64 years old, practically on the brink of retirement. You can't see or hear it – all those decades of yoga and macrobiotics, often ridiculed, are paying off. Only "Every Little Thing Does" weakens a bit after a good hour, but otherwise Sting still easily takes all the high notes.

The joy of playing also drives the best of Sting's solo catalogue: whether "If I Ever Lose My Faith" degenerates into a heavy, oppressive jam or "The Hounds of Winter" culminates in a mystical, dark outro, while Sting and backup singer Jo Lawry bark and howl in competition. Behind them, drummer Vinnie Colaiuta and the Cologne-Moroccan percussionist Rhani Krija lay the foundation for David Sancious (keyboards) and the young devilish fiddler Peter Tickell. Occasionally, Sumner's son Joe also joins the microphone. What this world-class selection of musicians skimps on in the jazzy middle section of "Englishman in New York" is paid back many times over when they improvise from "Roxanne" to Bill Withers' "Ain't no sunshine" and back again.

Sting can cover more than just baroque lute music. He's taken two songs from Peter Gabriel, with whom he was recently on tour: first, "Shock the Monkey," and later, the opening verses of the Genesis opus "Selling England by the Pound." "Can you tell me where my country lies?" is the line – a prelude to Sting's loneliness anthem "Message in a Bottle." That's enough of a statement about the isolationist tendencies of his Brexit-affected homeland. He could say more – the polyglot Northern Englishman speaks almost exclusively German on stage. But his lyrics are enough of a message, even in politically turbulent times like these.

"What is my reaction? What should it be, confronted by this latest atrocity?" is the question in "Driven to Tears," another Police gem. Pop in times of terror – is that allowed? It even has to be. "And they're only going to change this place / By killing everybody in the human race / (...) But I don't even wanna die just yet," it says in "Invisible Sun." The arc closes with "Fragile," with which Sting once opened a concert on the evening of September 11, 2001. Here, after an hour and three-quarters, it serves as a bouncer and memento mori for the 12,000 people in front of the fashionable Kurhaus, on adjacent balconies – and for the two brave onlookers who were listening on the scaffolding of a dilapidated high-rise next door.

(c) Rhein-Neckar-Zeitung by Daniel Bräuer