We continue our look back at the music of 50 years ago…….
The collision of rock music and classical music occurred in 1971 as the trio of Emerson, Lake & Palmer released a live in concert recording called “Pictures at an Exhibition”.
The band had released an LP called Tarkus earlier in the year and resumed touring in March. The tour included them doing their arrangements of the classical suite “Pictures at an Exhibition” by Modest Mussorgsky.
Mussorgsky was a Russian composer of the 1800’s and the suite in question was written in 1874. Here is Georg Solti and the Chicago Symphony doing it.
ELP had done the piece in concert since 1970 after Keith Emerson saw a performance of it and convinced his band-mates to adapt it. It really is a step forward for the so-called “Prog” movement and rock fans ate it up. It went to #3 on the charts.
Of course, the piece is driven by Emerson’s various keyboards including a Hammond C3, pipe organ, clavinet and Moog synthesizers. Palmer’s drumming is first rate and Lake adds some solid bass, tasty guitar and his beautiful voice to various spots in the production.
Lake also produces the record assisted by long time ELP engineer Eddy Offord and the sound quality is magnificent for a live record of the day.
The LP features a version of “Nutrocker” based on some Tchaikovsky music from The Nutcracker>
The band is only a year old and while some may see and hear this as pretentious nonsense, it really was some cutting edge stuff at it’s release. One reviewer calls it ” a rock band with extraordinary musical chops attacking a classic with a mixture of reverence and aggression”. It certainly is that.
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