HAMBURGER CONCERTO

Utterly wonderful. Nearly perfect. Perhaps only a minute or two too much of Birth detracts from this being the ultimate prog album. I love all Focus - yes, even Con Proby - but this one beats the band. One reviewer used an excellent word - elegant - to describe it. The only other criticism is that its soundworld - all those 22 instruments! - was impossible to reproduce on stage. Just shades it ahead of the first 2 sides of Focus III and Moving Waves. But only just. How could they take classical themes and treat them so tastefully and subtly? I mean, Keith Emerson was having a bit of a laugh, wasn't he? Entertaining, sure. But this is something else. These guys have the music in them, as Kiki Dee once almost said.