Pictures at an Exhibition

Wibble. Simultaneously joyous and also the sound of a hippo sitting on the organ keys at the Royal Albert Hall

Quite fitting that the album is titled 'Pictures at an Exhibition', because I feel like an everyday shmuck in an art gallery that is tailored to those who spend their lives living, breathing, and vomiting art. Because I don't get it.

Doubt I'm going to listen to this again.

Terrible album. Couldn’t wait for it to end.

Well that was pretentious as fuck

Great music, even if it's prog at its most excessive.

didn't know what to expect from a live prog album based on a classical music suite but it was fantastic! there were some sections that leaned a little too heavy into the art rock side things to the point where it was almost just incomprehensible noise but it was for such a short duration i'll overlook it. the more annoying aspect of the album was the gratuitous amount of clapping left in on the last two songs which easily add 2 minutes to the runtime. despite that, i thoroughly enjoyed this album

Ok baby lets strap in for some early 70's drug fueled prog rock. The concept is totally bananas. The Sage is probably the least unhinged, but the crowd going nuts for The Old Castle is just so crazy to me. This is the soundtrack to a mad scientist lair, especially The Hut of Baba Yaga. What is with this crowd?! The Nutcracker track at the end is fucking awesome. What am I supposed to do with this album?

Hey get the pitchforks, I thought classical music wasn't allowed here!

There are some goosebump moments, and a couple painful synth solos that detracted from my overall enjoyment of this adaptation. Closing the concert with the Nutcracker feels like a troll move, but the audience seems pretty into it

HL: “The Sage”, “The Great Gates of Kiev”

November 29, 2024

a live album of a classical piece - two reasons not to be on the list in my view. for classical, performed by rock musicians, it's pretty accomplished - but messier than if they had taken the time to record it properly, and the crowd noise tramples the start and end of a few tracks.
three geniuses combining to be far less than the sum of their parts.

Old-school progressive rock. Lots of synthesizers. Gets annoying quickly

How are live albums on this list?
Why would I want to listen to this version rather than the original Mussorgsky?
Who did this influence or inspire?

This really should be a 1, but the guys can play…

Pretentious wank!

A lot of music nerds shit on this band because they think ELP is pretentious, just showing off for hours and boring their listeners to tears. But that's just showing off. That's not pretension. They're all about setting a mood; it's about building a sonic environment in which one can play and explore. The people at the concert seem to dig what ELP is doing.

Hold up, this is a thing? I freaking love Mussorgsky's piece + the Ravel orchestral adaptation, so this will be incredibly biased if they do it justice.
Honestly super refreshing. Adding lyrics is kind of interesting, but also kind of works. Sucks that the oxen, my fave movement, did not make it.
Highlights: blues variation, curse of baba yaga
3* because of a fresh take on a classical fave of mine, but not all great. Lyrics were not necessary.

For those of you who are unaware (I doubt most of you aren't, but just in case) this is ELP's own take on a series of iconic orchestral pieces that are relatively out there compared to their contemporaries of the time, and in turn are not difficult to play, per se, but take some amount of effort to get right. Something that would be a definitive challenge for a high school orchestra, y'know? So, this album being mostly made up of ideas from that collection is really cool, but it also leaves a sour taste in my mouth. Certainly the instrumentation here is good, but comparing a single organ/synthesizer to the feats, leaps, and bounds that a group of musicians with classical training go through is nearly non-comparable, and in turn, leaves a lot of these songs sounding messy, and not in an artistic way, but rather in a way that is just altering art for the Hell of it. Sure, its neat to add some lyrics and more modern ideologies to these century old tracks, but they were good as were, and when you take a step back you realize this crowd is going wild for near butcherings of some amazing pieces. I know, I sound like a music snob, but it really does come off that way. There are parts here that I really must congratulate as a neat addition, but often I found myself just wishing I was listening to an orchestra performing these pieces, or at the very least, that these alters were studio recorded so that they could be cleaned up a bit and really brought to life. As is, its just something that's more novelty than anything. The nutcracker cover really hammers that point in, I find, and honestly, really doesn't even fit.

Funky, trippy, just plain fun!

Emerson Lake & Palmer? Don't even Emerson Lake & know 'er.

The musicianship is good, but the music for the most part isn't all that interesting. I did like that time it sounded like they were playing Lazy by Deep Purple, though.

Such a cool classic/rock blend! Nutcracker rock is such classic, great album.

It's a lot. I kinda get the point of view of the punks now...

Definitely weird but I fuck with it. Love the proggy and the keys. Conceptually reminds me of Ulver's William Blake album. 4/5.