...The voice and guitar of Pink Floyd, David Gilmour, wowed a capacity crowd at the Albert Hall in an unprecedented epic performance spanning three and a half hours. The triumphant climax of his world tour saw his band (featuring several members of Pink Floyd’s most recent touring lineup) demonstrate clearly that age and a rich back catalogue are no obstacles to remaining creatively vibrant or contemporary.

Despite the retrospective second half, consisting of over an hour and a half of Pink Floyd classics, this is no Rolling Stones nostalgic revue – rather a chance to revisit a side of Pink Floyd that has been unfortunately dormant since the band took to stadia the world over in the mid Seventies : a band that inhabited small rooms and performed long and freeform variants, a type of jazz-inflected rock that is both fluid and fixed. A band that was able to see the whites of the eyes of the crowd, and to interact intimately with it’s constituency instead of behind an enormous wall.

Firstly, tonights performance proved that the band – be they called David Gilmour, or Pink Floyd – do not need the accountrements of stadium rock. Flying Pigs, flaming beds, crashing airplanes, rotating mirror balls and massive video screens are merely window dressing : the opening trio of songs taken from “Dark Side Of The Moon”, performed merely as a band and some lights, were as compelling as any stadium rock moment.

Whilst the set occasionally lacks the concert dynamic – for example, after the opening trio of songs, the band walk off stage whilst a tape plays for several minutes – the band perform with passion and aplomb. Backed with Guy Pratt (Pink Floyd bassist since 1987), Jon Carin (who can seemingly play any instrument capable making of  a noise, and having been part of Pink Floyd since 1987), Phil Manzenera (on loan from Roxy Music), and  Steve Di Stanislaw, borrowed from Crosby and Nash’s band (with David ruefully suggests, “They’ll want him back at some point") provide a solid and excellent backing band for David and his partner-in-musical-crime, Floyd keyboardist Rick Wright. Guest appearances by Crosby and Nash on several songs, Pink Floyd saxophonist Dick Parry, and Mica Paris further bolstered the lineup into a night to remember and be captured on film for posterity – and the Christmas DVD market.

Songs from his highly successful solo record “On An Island” sit comfortably with the surroundings. Whilst on record, the songs sometimes appear detached, in the flesh, they have been liberated, set free, and the concert versions improve dramatically upon the album. “Take A Breath”, a fluid and open rocker that recalls the Floyd’s rockiest album (‘Animals’) unravels to it’s full potential in a concert setting, as indeed does almost all of the new material.

Touched with themes of mortality and love, the mournful playing of Gilmour’s tasteful solos – where it’s as much what you don’t say as what you do that matters – casts an air of mastery. Gilmour doesn’t need to show off with his ability , and – combined with the minimal presentation prove that often Less is More.

It’s only in the last half hour of the entire evening when the gloves are taken off. As “Echoes” builds to a crescendo, the hall is bathed in a glorious cacophony of tribal drumming, people all around me are lost in their own silent reverie, and all of a sudden, like a revelation, lasers are everywhere, and it’s an instant timewarp back to the Pink Floyd live album of 1988. It looks as if the mothership is landing in front of your eyes.

That despite what promoters and Harvey Goldmsith might think, Pink Floyd aren’t about the names of the people on stage, or even the songs, but a state of mind. Though – and we should never mistake this – whilst this is as near to Pink Floyd as you can get, it isn’t by definition, Pink Floyd.

But close your eyes, and it could be 1971 again. The spirit of the music is 100%, undoubtedly there. The long, improvisational takes upon “Fat Old Sun” (a worthy equal to any of the bands legendary jams of the 70’s), and the aforementioned, stunning “Echoes” leave me in no doubt that this is as good as it gets. Steve pounds the drums as if he’s lived the song. There are really no words to describe this : music that transports you, that explores, and yet, never, never, loses you.

The evening had it’s drawbacks. The odd, overenthusiastic person yelling the songs out of tune and out of time in your ear – one person even was loudly vocalising his own version of a piano solo behind me. The moments during the quiet songs where the same dunderhead screams “WE LOVE YOU DAVE!” (and it’s never ‘Dave’, only ever ‘David’). The people behind you asking you to slouch because they can’t be bothered to sit up straight – and normally doing so right in the quietest parts of the songs. And a stream of constant latecomers who failed to realise that when it says on your ticket “STARTS 8.30”, that’s exactly what it means : “The Great Gig In The Sky” was spoilt by two people arriving at around 10.20pm and dancing and waving their way through the seated rows to the visible annoyance of most of the crowd.

And the performance was by no means perfect : the acoustics for the opening handful of songs was fairly poor, and Gilmours voice was showing signs of three nights of three hour shows in a row. Mica Paris, guest vocalist on “The Great Gig In The Sky” seems to have forgotten the melody to the original and improvised her own, less effective tune on the spot. But these are mere technicalities. No matter what they were playing, be it the first Pink Floyd single “Arnold Layne”, or the last “High Hopes”, or a cover of Syd Barrett’s “Dominoes”, the band were fluid, tight, and as much a joy to watch as it seems it is to be in.

But at times the band seemed to achieve that rarest of things - the state of levitation and telepathy that can see a song turn and change character purely at a shared glance – and also bristling with a kind of enthusiasm and ability that is not befitting sixty year old elder statesmen of rock.

In an evening of highlights, it’s difficult to pinpoint a crowning glory.  Perhaps then, the most obvious would be the encore where the band were joined by Pink Floyd drummer Nick Mason, reuniting the final Pink Floyd lineup on stage for the first time in twelve years. Grown men with tears in their eyes in some form of stunned rapture as this band lived and breathed again for a few brief minutes. In front of the smallest public audience Pink Floyd have officially performed in front of since I was born, they gave us “Wish You Were Here”, and a final, beautiful “Comfortably Numb”.

And with that, maybe they were gone for ever. What no amount of money, no amount of American promoters blank chequebooks can tempt, 5,220 people from across the world packed into a room in West London witness something no money could buy.

I’ve seen Pink Floyd twice. And that’s something I never thought I could ever say.

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