Review Summary: It's one of the legendary live albums of the classic prog period. It represents one of the best contributions to making classical music more popular to people
“Pictures At An Exhibition” is the debut live album of Emerson, Lake & Palmer and was released in 1971. The line up on the album is Keith Emerson, Greg Lake and Carl Palmer.
“Pictures At An Exhibition” is one of the seminal documents of the golden progressive rock era of the 70’s, an album that made its way into the musical collections of high-school kids, like me, who never heard anything about the classical composer Modest Mussorgsky, and also knew nothing about the Russian nationalist artist Victor Hartman, whose work was the real inspiration for this Mussorgsky classical composition.
The original piece, “Pictures At An Exhibition” was a suite written for piano by Mussorgsky in 1874. When Mussorgsky was going on to an exhibition of paintings, at a gallery of art in St. Petersburg, of Hartmann, an architect and painter and a great friend of him who had recently died in 1873, he had an idea after visiting it, and soon he decided to pay a tribute to his great friend. So, he chosen ten pictures among all exposed and composed a song for each one, uniting them by a common theme “Promenade”, the various parts of the musical piece.
Chronologically, it was the Emerson, Lake & Palmer's third release, although it was made soon after their eponymous debut studio album. Due to management conflicts, the album wasn’t released until after “Tarkus”, their second studio album. Their record label didn’t want to release this album as a rock album, and they thought that it must be released on their classical music label instead on their rock label. Thinking that it would lead to poor sales, Emerson, Lake & Palmer decided not to release it in that moment, waiting for a better chance. However, after the success of “Tarkus”, the record label agreed to release it as a live album. It was recorded at Newcastle City Hall in North East England.
This Emerson, Lake & Palmer’s legendary version of Mussorgsky’s beautiful work, remains as one of the best examples of a rock version of a classical piece. However, it wasn’t their first treatment of a classical piece in this manner, by any means. Emerson, had done several previously versions of some other classical pieces with his earlier group The Nice. But it was the first time to reach a mass audience or get heavy radio play, at least some excerpts, and introduced the notion of “classical rock” to millions of listeners, making that the classical music became to be viewed from another point of view, becoming to be considered less pretentious and more popular within the public.
With this new version of “Pictures At An Exhibition”, the band stayed true to all the original themes, but played them with the energy, rawness and loudness of rock. However, they also added some self written pieces, like “The Sage” and the energetic jam “Blues Variation”. The piece was one of the band's favourites on stage, so the album was then naturally also recorded live. This is the live album that best demonstrates what a tight and powerful unit, Emerson, Lake & Plamer was on stage. It was also their most moog dominated album, to that point, and Emerson experiments with any sound possible on the instrument. But his organ playing was still the main focus in the music, and especially on the side two, delivering the whole band some of their most raw and energetic playing ever. The album also featured a rather cheesy version of "Nutrocker" that was released as a single. "Pictures At An Exhibition" is a wonderful and captivating album that proved the progressive rock still has many interesting boundaries of the 70’s that can be explored today.
For many, Emerson, Lake & Palmer’s performance of “Pictures At An Exhibition”, from this time period, will no doubt show the band at the peak of their powers. It’s not hard to see why, as this progressive rock super group at this stage in their career, were all about proving to the world that they were the real musical deal. Playing, they certainly could, as their skills were perfectly on display throughout this set, as each part of Mussorgsky’s composition contained lengthy solos, especially from Emerson, whose array of Hammond organ, moog synthesizer, piano and clavinet never fails to deeply impress a real listener watchful. We really can say that the man is truly a great gifted artist.
Conclusion: “Pictures At An Exhibition” is a difficult album to digest if you aren’t used to with the sound of the group or with the classical music. It’s also a difficult album even for many of their usual fans. So, “Pictures At An Exhibition” isn’t the best place to start with Emerson, Lake & Palmer, but you surely will like it, when you’re into it, I think. If you're a novice with the band’s music, you mustn't begin by this album until you’ve listened to most of the others. I think that the best place to start with them, is with their eponymous debut studio album, “Tarkus”, “Brain Salad Surgery” or their live album “Welcome Back My Friends To The Show That Never Ends”. Then, you may like it or not. However, believe me. This live album, even after all these years, still remains as a magnum opus of the classic progressive rock era.
Music was my first love.
John Miles (Rebel)
