Conducting the Scorpions' - "Wind of Change" Project

The Scorpions are a rock group from Germany who have enjoyed great international popularity for nearly thirty years. They are rightly famous for ballades such as "Wind of change", "Send me an angel" and "You and I" as well as powerful titles like "Rock me like a hurricane" and "Big city nights". In the past few years Lawton has led many concerts of their "Wind of Change" symphonic crossover program. (The pictures on this page are from the 2002 concert on Berlin's Gendarmenmarkt.)

Lawton's collaboration with the Scorpions began in March 2001 with their tour of Russia and the Baltic States. Christian Kolonovits asked me to take over this project which he had originally recorded and performed with the Scorpions and the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra. This concert program tour was presented in seven different cities, in each case newly rehearsed with the local state orchestra of 65-70 musicians. The evening concerts were presented to audiences of up to 10,000 listeners (as in the new ice arena in St. Petersburg.) Klaus Meine

Collaborating on this project were: Belarus State Orchestra, Ukrainian National Symphonic Orchestra, St. Petersburg Radio Symphony, Latvian National Symphony Orchestra, Lithuanian State Symphony Orchestra.

The program was presented in July 2002 with the Berliner Symphoniker at the Classic Open Air festival on Berlin's Gendarmenmarkt, extended by two orchestral pieces: Verdi's "La forza del destino" overture and "Mars" from Holst's "The Planets". This extended program was then presented at the Rüsselsheim Classic Open Air festival with the Deutsches Filmorchester.

On August 26th 2006, the Filmorchester again collaborated the with Scorpions in an open air concert in front of the new Hauptbahnhof in Berlin.