Mussorgsky Emerson Lake & Palmer: Pictures at an Exhibition (1971)The inside gatefold with the frames filled in. Once again, I wish I could find a larger version.Promenade
The Gnome
Promenade
The Sage
The Old Castle
Blues Variation
Promenade
The Hut of Baba Yaga
The Curse of Baba Yaga
The Hut of Baba Yaga
The Great Gates of Kiev
The End
Nutrocker
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Tarkus was recorded in January 1971 and released in June that same year.
Pictures at an Exhibition was recorded live during a show in March 1971. This means that with
Tarkus barely in the bag, and presumably featuring prominently in their concerts, Emerson Lake & Palmer were also performing a fully realized adaptation of Modest Mussorgsky's
Pictures at an Exhibition.
Okay, maybe not a full adapation. Mussorgsky's original suite had interpretations of 10 paintings by his friend Viktor Hartmann, linked by a returning "Promenade" theme representing the walk from one painting to the next. ELP's arrangment only treats four of the paintings plus the Promenade, but it also adds variations/extrapolations to two of them, and a new acoustic song by Lake ("The Sage") fits nicely into the suite.
Overall, it is a rather faithful adaptation. The movements omitted from the original are the shorter, less memorable pieces. The first several movements are present, as is the closing piece "The Great Gates of Kiev", so the listener is left well satisfied. ELP's version is of comparable length to the original suite, just under 40 minutes. If all ten paintings had gotten the fully ELP treatment, their version would have easily gone an hour or longer.
Emerson Lake & Palmer's love of classical music and adapating it to the rock and rock genre hit its peak here, filling an entire LP. (Even the encore, "Nutrocker", is an adaptation of a work by another famous Russian composer, Tchaikovsky.) I recently listened to a full orchestral version of
Pictures at an Exhibition and was amazed at how much it sounded like the ELP version. Nowadays, it's cool to adapt rock music for an orchestra, and that's what it sounded like to me. It sounded like someone had taken one of my favorite works by ELP and orchestrated it. I had to keep reminding myself that the classical version came first.
The album is not perfect. One thing that I prefer with a live album is that it be edited so as to resemble a contiguous performance. I like to hear applause between songs of course, and then after a moment, either the front man introduces the next song or the band just start playing. The first song should sound like an opener and the last song should sound like a closer; bonus points if you actually hear them say "Hello" at the beginning and "Good Night" at the end. That kind of thing. Even if the songs came from completely different shows, it's possible to blend the applause and make it sound like it's all a single piece of a tape from a single concert.
Here, after Lake introduces the suite, the audience responds, then quiets, then there is an obvious edit, then the music begins. The edit takes us out of the moment, and that's unfortunate, because what follows is 33+ minutes of very powerful classical rock. The opening Promenade is performed on the pipe organ. After a drum fill (giving Emerson time to get from the organ console to the stage) we're treated to our first painting ("The Gnome") featuring Hammond organ, bass, drums, and of course the Modular Moog synthesizer. When the Promenade returns, Lake has added lyrics to it, and a brief interlude on the Moog takes us into his song "The Sage". Lyrically, there is nothing to indicate that this isn't an interpretation of one of the paintings.
"The Old Castle" continues the suite proper, leading into a bit known simply as "Blues Variations". The Promenade returns again, then "The Hut of Baba Yaga" (including "The Curse of Baba Yaga"), and then the concluding piece, "The Great Gates of Kiev", again featuring lyrics added by Lake. After a great ovation, Lake asks "Do you want some more music?" and the crowd roars its response. Then there is another obvious edit, then the encore begins.
I want to harm whoever edited this album. Even in 1971, I'm sure the technology existed to blend the applause and hide the edits better than what we got. There are only the two bad edits, but they mar the first impression and leave a poor last impression, and that's just unfortunate. Supposedly, Atlantic didn't want to release the album on Cotillion, but instead on their classical label, since it was an adaptation of a classical work. ELP didn't think that that was a good idea at all, and opted instead to shelf the album. Only after the success of Tarkus did Atlantic agree to release
Pictures at an Exhibition, so it's possible that the mastering was rushed. I'm just speculating; I have no idea, but I can't think of any excuse for such poor edits. They really do mar an otherwise great album.