PICTURES AT AN EXHIBITION

One of the greatest live preformances of all time. ELP knew how to achive this musical greatness mixing the true classics with the hard edge blues and rock. The original work of Mussorgsky was made for piano only (check Sviatoslav Richter's piano preformance), then in the early 1900's Ravel turn this into an orchestral piece (actually Maurice ravel has this strange itch of turning solo pieces into orchestra)... well, this is the "modern" response to the already "slashed" opus, but ELP did it with grandiose behavior and so much respect, that they ask for permission personally. After all, humble attitude is better than a pride one. From PROMENADE to THE HUT OF BABA YAGA, and THE GREAT GATES OF KIEV, this record exposes the true sense of prog: classical music mixed with rock. Fortunatelly the only weak point of the record is at the end with the NUTROCKER, a funny song evoking Tchaikovsky's NUTCRACKER, with a very "christmas" feeling, good, but avoidable. Enjoy, a classic from 71, turned into a must.The best moment must be BLUE'S VARIATION, a 5 minute piece showing how music should be played.