Pictures At An Exhibition [Remaster]

Performer: Emerson, Lake & Palmer
Producer: Jeff Palo; Derek Dressler (Reissue)
Distributor: Sony Music Distribution (

Notes: Emerson, Lake & Palmer perform Mussorgsky's "Pictures At An Exhibition". Emerson, Lake & Palmer: Keith Emerson (keyboards); Greg Lake (vocals, guitar, bass); Carl Palmer (drums, percussion). Audio Remasterer: Andy Pearce. Much was made of early prog-rock's fusion of rock with classical music, but ELP was one of the only bands to take that task seriously, and never more so than on PICTURES AT AN EXHIBITION. The well-known Mussorgsky piece is a staple of the classical music diet, and a prime example of "program music," where related sections of a piece combine to tell a story. True to the spirit of the times, ELP attacked "Pictures" with both classically trained respect and rocker irreverence. The album, recorded live in 1971, finds the band turning Mussorgsky's work inside out, not just restructuring it but reinventing it for their rock audience. While sections like "Promenade" and The Hut of Baba Yaga" are essentially electrified, rocked-up versions of the original melodies, the band injects plenty of their own original (but not unrelated) motifs into the piece, including Greg Lake's moody ballad "The Sage" and the self-explanatory "Blues Variation." ELP is to be commended as much for its brash ambition as for its achievement in attempting a Moog-ified revamping of such a well established piece as PICTURES.

Emerson, Lake & Palmer were one of the most popular of the initial wave of 1970s British prog-rock bands. They sported post-British Invasion rock's first alternative to the guitar hero in Keith Emerson, whose outlandish keyboard antics rivaled the onstage pyrotechnics of Hendrix and Townshend. The group mixed heavy rock riffs with classical influences, relying equally on instrumental virtuosity and an epic sense of showmanship that won them countless fans in their '70s heyday.

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