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Customer Reviews of Pictures at an Exhibition

The Greatest Musical Exhibition at this Promonade!
This album is GODLY!!!! I destroyed ELP's "Pictures at an Exhibition," that I had to buy another CD because I warped it by playing that CD so much! I love "Pictures at an Exhibition!" This is the greatest album they ever did in my opinion. Hell, I love this album more than "Brain Salad Surgery," really! I just love the sound Keith Emerson's 1967 Hammond C3 through those tallboy Leslie speakers. His Moog Modular system was awesome (though sometimes it sounded polyphonic, even though it was monophonic). Greg Lake's 1968 Fender Jazz Bass through the Hiwatt stacks sounded killer & loved the distortion at the beginning of "The Curse Of Baba Yaga." Carl Palmer's 1966 Gretsch drumset was small, but it was loud, cutting, & explosive (don't ever underestimate a 20" bass drum!). If there is one flaw on this album, it's "The Blues Variations." Although Emerson, Lake & Palmer are credited, it should be credited to Brian 'Blinkly' Davison, Keith Emerson & Keith 'Lee' Jackson (pick up The Nice's final album, "Elegy" & listen to 'My Back Pages' & you'll hear parts of 'The Blues Variations' in that song during the organ playing). Getting back to better things, this performance isn't complete without Emerson picking up & throwing down his Hammond L122 (with a Dallas-Arbiter Fuzzface in the connection chain) at the end of "The Great Gates of Keiv." How he gets that organ to sound like a distorted violin out of tune in one part of the noise chaos is beyond me! This is an album that you must hear from start to finish from "The Promonade, Part 1," to "Nutrocker." Ever since I bought this CD back in 2001 (I was told not to get this CD from a friend of mine because it's pompus & absolute crap), I cannot stop playing it! Hell, I might have to get a third copy of this album for all we know.

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Erratic execution mars ambitious concept
With virtuoso keyboardist Keith Emerson at the helm, progressive rock supergroup Emerson Lake & Palmer specialized in adapting classical music to the rock form. Their 1971 debut featured adaptations of works like Bartok's "The Barbarian" and Janacek's "Sinfonietta" (re-titled "Knife-Edge"). "Pictures at an Exhibition" (1972), the first of three live albums ELP released during the 1970s, represented an ambitious leap from these shorter attempts. Most of the album's running time is devoted to ELP's interpretation of Russian composer Modest Mussorgsky's work of the same name. The encore "Nutrocker," a takeoff on Tchaikovsky's "Nutcracker" theme, brings the album to full LP running time. <
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>To some extent, all ELP live albums suffer from the same limitation: they fail to convey the spectacle of the band in concert. ELP shows featured pyrotechnics, fireworks, knife-throwing, and a variety of other visual treats that don't translate to record. While these stage antics enhanced the experience for those present, they occasionally hampered the band's ability to deliver the solid performances required for great recordings. Later live albums like "Welcome Back My Friends To The Show That Never Ends..." circumvented this problem by cherry-picking the best tracks from various shows. However, the long-form nature of "Pictures at an Exhibition" made it difficult to gloss over the dodgy bits. <
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>There are unquestionably moments of greatness, but not enough to prevent all but the most diehard ELP fans from resorting to the Fast Forward button. The intro and its reprise ("Promenade") and finale ("The Great Gates of Kiev") are appropriately majestic, and Greg Lake delivers a lovely vocal performance on "The Sage." "The Hut of Baba Yaga" brilliantly showcases ELP's kinetic fury. Beyond that, there's way too much bluff: unfocused synthesizer noodling (on "The Gnome," "The Old Castle," and "The Curse of Baba Yaga"), meandering blues jams ("Blues Variations"), and Emerson's obligatory wrestling match with his organ, which disrupts the grandeur of the finale. <
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>Rock purists and classical aficionados alike excoriated "Pictures" for daring to merge the two genres. Such criticism represents the height of snobbery. The real problem is that with a work of this ambition, there's little margin for error. Unfortunately, ELP's desire to please the crowd left them with a highly erratic recording, unworthy of the lofty goals they sought to achieve. <
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>ELP would go on to fine-tune and arguably improve their interpretation of Mussorgsky's work. Check out the underrated "Works Live" for a condensed, more focused version of "Pictures," or the highly polished, stately version from the 4-CD boxed set, "Return of the Manticore." While this record is a must-own for diehard fans, newcomers to the world of ELP should approach the original "Pictures" with caution.

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And you thought Brain Salad Surgery was bombastic!
Brain Salad Surgery sounds positively normal as compared with the overblown, excellent live album Pictures at an Exhibition. They adapt, rewrite, rearrange, and otherwise mess around with Mussorgsky's famous multipart epic - what's surprising is that it makes for an extraordinarily entertaining listen. First things first, the sound isn't great. It's fairly good, but the muddiness of the recording is apparent. That doesn't matter though, the music is still exciting, bombastic, and grandiose, and it's being played LIVE! It's simply amazing what this trio could do with their instruments. Opening with the first of three rearrangements of Mussorgsky's Promenade, played on Emerson's organ, the band really gets going with The Gnome, a highly rhythmic piece highlighting Palmer's drums. The Sage always seems slightly out of place; it is the first of several pieces that was not composed by Mussorgsky, and it shows. Lake's ballad is not bad, but it shouldn't have been placed here. The Old Castle is shocking, with Emerson's onslaught of keyboards leading the way. The music is very different than Mussorgsky's, only loosely following the original composition (especially at the beginning). Blues Variations is an instrumental the segues directly out of The Old Castle, but it's a relief to have something simple and less complex. The true gems of the album come at the end - The Hut of Baba Yaga, The Curse of Baba Yaga, and the reprise of The Hut comprise a medley that can easily stand as ELP's finest recorded moment live. And The Great Gates of Kiev brings everything together in a brilliant ballad. Nutrocker, the encore, is basically just a throwaway, and my least favorite moment on the album. <
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>Of course, classical music fans still consider this an abomination - the raw intensity and Emerson's numerous rewrites don't remain exactly true to the original suite by Mussorgsky. You must listen to this music on its own basis before comparing it to the orchestral suite. <
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>Personally, I think this album should be purchased after the first four studio albums by Emerson, Lake, and Palmer. It's mostly instrumentals, the exceptions are few and far between, and there's very little here that could be called easily accessible. As strange as the album can get, as bombastic as this trio can sound, and as muddled as the sound can get, this remains ELP's most exciting, invigorating, and inventive live album. Pictures at an Exhibition would remain in their tour set for years, albeit in a shortened form. This album belongs in the collections of any progressive rock fans, as this is a cornerstone of that entire movement - a moment of sheer, unbridled creativity that shocked rock fans everywhere. The classical desecrations that ELP created remain just as exciting, as groundbreaking, and as impressive as they did when this album was released.