PICTURES AT AN EXHIBITION

As I grew up with classical music, rock remakes of classical pieces are hardly stand-alones for me. In fact, I know many of those pieces in "normal", i.e. orchestral, or in case of solo concertos, normally instrumented versions. In case of Modest Mussorgsky's Pictures At An Exhibition this is true in an even wider variety, as it was originally composed as a piano sequence which became famous in the orchestration by Maurice Ravel.

Of course, there is absolutely no similarity in sound between any of the versions, not that I expected anything like that. Emerson, Lake & Palmer didn't even use all of the pictures of the original score, instead adding one or two of their own. But the biggest addition is the voice (and lyrics) in The Great Gates Of Kiev which is one of the reasons I rate this particular album so high. Another one is the encore, but that again may be because I simply love the original Nutcracker Suite by Tchaikovsky. But that probably wouldn't do the performance of those three musicians justice. Keith Emerson, Greg Lake and Carl Palmer were already renowned musicians when they formed the trio, and they show their skills to full extent during those 37 or so minutes.

By the way, on the CD I have there are not only two parts with Nutrocker included in the second one, but each of the pictures is a separate track on the CD and so is the encore.

To finish it off, I still have to find a recording of Pictures At An Exhibition in any instrumentation that doesn't deserve full 5 stars. This includes the one by Emerson, Lake & Palmer.