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cd release as olympia concert
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original release
album rating: ★★★★★
Genre: Celtic folk / Breton music / progressive folk / Celtic rock. Alan Stivell à l'Olympia is the fourth album and first live album by Alan Stivell (born Alain Cochevelou, Riom, Auvergne, 1944), the Breton musician who almost single-handedly brought the Celtic harp back to life and transformed Breton and Celtic music into a living, modern, internationally heard tradition. The album documents the historic concert at the Olympia music hall in Paris on 28 February 1972 — broadcast live on Radio Europe 1 to an estimated seven million listeners — which has come to be regarded as one of the defining moments in the cultural history of Brittany and the Celtic world. Stivell assembled a nine-piece group for the occasion, including guitarist Dan Ar Braz on electric guitar, Gabriel Yacoub on guitars, dulcimer and banjo, Pascal Stive on organ, René Werneer on violin/fiddle, Gérard Levasseur on bass, Michel Santangeli (later drummer for Jacques Higelin) on drums, and Serj Parayre on percussion. The concert is divided into two parts: the first acoustic, with Stivell on Celtic harp, tin whistle, bombard and voice, singing mainly in Breton with one Gaelic air and two songs in English; the second electric, in a style that would soon be called Celtic rock — 'Pop Plinn', 'Tha Mi Sgith', 'Tri Martolod', 'The King of the Fairies' and 'Suite Sudarmoricaine'. Stivell later said of the concert: 'There was a feeling of conquest of Paris, of France. And it was not with weapons in hand, but with the harp in hand, which is better!'
Label: Fontana (France), distributed by Phonogram (Philips). First copies sold May 1972; wide release September 1972. Producer: Frank Giboni.
Recording studio: Live recording at L'Olympia, Boulevard des Capucines, Paris, 28 February 1972.
Critical reception: The album was immediately and unanimously hailed as a milestone — a cultural event as much as a musical one. In 1983, Rolling Stone magazine awarded it five stars in its Record Guide, placing it among the 30 best albums of 1972. The French Wikipedia notes that it is to this day the best-selling record of Breton essence. Contemporaries and later commentators identified the concert as the decisive catalyst for the Breton musical revival of the 1970s, inspiring the formation of groups including Tri Yann, Bleizi Ruz and Malicorne.
Commercial success: 150,000 copies were sold immediately upon the album's release in May 1972. Within just over a year, 1,500,000 copies had been sold worldwide, reaching over two million thereafter. The success of À l'Olympia led to Stivell's previous album Renaissance de la harpe celtique (1971) being rediscovered, and to his next album Chemins de terre (1973) also charting — the exceptional feat of having three albums simultaneously in the French Top 30. In 1987, the label Dreyfus Records reissued a remastered CD under the title Olympia Concert.
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