BEETHOVEN'S LAST NIGHT

This is the first album by the Trans-Siberian Orchestra that doesn’t talk about Christmas. Like their other works, this one is also a concept album – a story about the famous composer Beethoven this time. The story is fictional, about the last night before Beethoven’s death and his tenth symphony, more details about this can be obtained from the band’s website.

About the tracks, most of them were based on Beethoven’s like the famous ‘Für Elise’ or ‘Moonlight Sonata’ (the first track ‘Overture’) and some more; this is an album about him after all. There’re also a few of Mozart’s works as well such as ‘Flight of the Bumblebee’ (the track ‘Last Illusion’). This album is full of great combination between classic music and rock. For example, tracks like ‘Mozart\\Figaro’ and ‘Beethoven’ has a great instrumental work with a sort of neo-classical feeling. The vocalized tracks are quite vary and interesting; you get a sad and depressed songs like ‘What is Eternal’ or ‘Who is this Child’, a beautiful melodic track like The Moment’ or ‘The Dreams of Candlelight’, and a quite funky track such as ‘Mephistopheles Return’. The vocals, although may sound a bit cheesy in some parts, really contribute in making this album as a great rock opera. The piano is quite dominant here, as it can be heard almost in every song in this album. Somehow this album features less orchestration than their other works, but that’s not a really big deal. Like what they’ve done in the other album as well, the tracks here are rather short, mostly only last between 3-4 minutes long. A few tracks may sound more like filler tracks, although it’s actually acceptable since this is a concept album. I don’t think that there’s a single weak track here, and the story flows quite nicely between each song.

Overall, this is a great effort. I’d say it’s their best work so far; maybe a bit ironic because the band seems to be more focused on Christmas theme and yet, their best is actually come from a non-Christmas album. Anyway, fans of classical music may like to check this one out. And for those who already familiar with TSO previous works, then you will definitely want to have this album! Hopefully the band would make more non-Christmas album in the future because they’ve done really good on this one, thus showing that they actually have more potential in doing so, although their Christmas albums are also good.