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Pictures at an Exhibition (album)

 

 
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Pictures at an Exhibition (album)
 
 
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Pictures at an Exhibition is an album by British
United Kingdom

The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, commonly known as the United Kingdom , the UK or Britain,is a sovereign state located off the northwestern coast of continental Europe....
 progressive rock
Progressive rock

Progressive rock is a form of rock music that evolved in the late 1960s and early 1970s as part of a "mostly British attempt to elevate rock music to new levels of artistic credibility." The term "art rock" is often used interchangeably with "progressive rock", but while there are crossovers between the two genres, they are not identical....
 band Emerson, Lake & Palmer
Emerson, Lake & Palmer

Emerson, Lake & Palmer were an England progressive rock Supergroup . In the 1970s, the band was extremely popular, selling over 35 million albums and headlining huge concerts....
, released in 1971 as a live album and re-released in 2001 as a remastered edition including both live and studio versions of Mussorgsky's
Modest Mussorgsky

Modest Petrovich Mussorgsky , one of the Russian composers known as the Five, was an innovator of Music of Russia. He strove to achieve a uniquely Russian musical identity, often in deliberate defiance of the established conventions of Western music....
 classical piece Pictures at an Exhibition
Pictures at an Exhibition

Pictures at an Exhibition is a famous suite of ten piano pieces composed by Modest Mussorgsky in 1874.The suite is generally acknowledged to be Mussorgsky's greatest solo piano composition, and has become a showpiece for virtuoso pianists....
. The original live album was recorded at Newcastle City Hall
Newcastle City Hall

Newcastle City Hall is a concert hall located in Newcastle upon Tyne, which has hosted many popular music acts through the years.It is adjacent to the city baths....
 in North East England
North East England

North-East England is one of the nine official regions of England and comprises the combined area of Northumberland, County Durham, Tyne and Wear, part of North Yorkshire and Tees Valley....
. The opening track of the album was played on a Harrison & Harrison
Harrison & Harrison

Harrison & Harrison are a firm of pipe organ builders in the United Kingdom, examples of whose work can also be found in many other countries....
 pipe organ which was installed in the City Hall in 1928. The organ console is some way above stage level, at the top of a stepped terrace used for choral performances.






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Pictures at an Exhibition is an album by British
United Kingdom

The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, commonly known as the United Kingdom , the UK or Britain,is a sovereign state located off the northwestern coast of continental Europe....
 progressive rock
Progressive rock

Progressive rock is a form of rock music that evolved in the late 1960s and early 1970s as part of a "mostly British attempt to elevate rock music to new levels of artistic credibility." The term "art rock" is often used interchangeably with "progressive rock", but while there are crossovers between the two genres, they are not identical....
 band Emerson, Lake & Palmer
Emerson, Lake & Palmer

Emerson, Lake & Palmer were an England progressive rock Supergroup . In the 1970s, the band was extremely popular, selling over 35 million albums and headlining huge concerts....
, released in 1971 as a live album and re-released in 2001 as a remastered edition including both live and studio versions of Mussorgsky's
Modest Mussorgsky

Modest Petrovich Mussorgsky , one of the Russian composers known as the Five, was an innovator of Music of Russia. He strove to achieve a uniquely Russian musical identity, often in deliberate defiance of the established conventions of Western music....
 classical piece Pictures at an Exhibition
Pictures at an Exhibition

Pictures at an Exhibition is a famous suite of ten piano pieces composed by Modest Mussorgsky in 1874.The suite is generally acknowledged to be Mussorgsky's greatest solo piano composition, and has become a showpiece for virtuoso pianists....
. The original live album was recorded at Newcastle City Hall
Newcastle City Hall

Newcastle City Hall is a concert hall located in Newcastle upon Tyne, which has hosted many popular music acts through the years.It is adjacent to the city baths....
 in North East England
North East England

North-East England is one of the nine official regions of England and comprises the combined area of Northumberland, County Durham, Tyne and Wear, part of North Yorkshire and Tees Valley....
. The opening track of the album was played on a Harrison & Harrison
Harrison & Harrison

Harrison & Harrison are a firm of pipe organ builders in the United Kingdom, examples of whose work can also be found in many other countries....
 pipe organ which was installed in the City Hall in 1928. The organ console is some way above stage level, at the top of a stepped terrace used for choral performances. The drum roll connecting the opening track to the next served to cover Emerson's dash back down to the stage.

There was also a video made of a different live performance. This had a limited theatrical
Movie theater

A movie theater, movie theatre, picture theatre, film theater or cinema is a venue, usually a building, for viewing film ....
 release in 1973, and a remastered DVD
DVD

DVD, also known as "Digital Versatile Disc" or "Digital Video Disc,"is a popular optical disc data storage device media format. Its main uses are video and data storage....
 release with Dolby surround sound
Surround sound

Surround sound, using multichannel audio, encompasses a range of techniques for enriching the Sound recording and reproduction quality, of an audio source, with additional audio channels reproduced via additional, discrete speakers....
 in 2000. This performance is notable for the energy passed by the three young musicians. Being a live album, sometimes Keith Emerson's voltage-controlled Moog synthesizer
Moog synthesizer

Moog synthesizer may refer to any number of analog synthesizers designed by Dr. Robert Moog or manufactured by Moog Music, and is commonly used as a generic term for analog and digital music synthesisers....
 plays the wrong notes, apparently due to power supply problems.

Cover design


The original album cover used a gatefold sleeve depicting, on the outside, blank picture frames labeled with the titles of the pieces: "The Old Castle", "The Gnome", etc. On the inside all the pictures were revealed, but one remains blank: "Promenade". (The musical piece, of course, is not about a picture, but represents a walk through the gallery.)

Some CD covers use only the "revealed" version.

Track listing

  1. "Promenade" (Emerson, Mussorgsky) – 1:58
  2. "The Gnome" (Mussorgsky, Palmer) – 4:18
  3. "Promenade" (Lake, Mussorgsky) – 1:23
  4. "The Sage" (Lake) – 4:42
  5. "The Old Castle" (Emerson, Mussorgsky) – 2:33
  6. "Blues Variation" (Emerson, Lake, Palmer) – 4:22
  7. "Promenade" (Mussorgsky) – 1:29
  8. "The Hut of Baba Yaga" (Mussorgsky) – 1:12
  9. "The Curse of Baba Yaga" (Emerson, Lake, Palmer) – 4:10
  10. "The Hut of Baba Yaga" (Mussorgsky) – 1:06
  11. "The Great Gate of Kiev/The End" (Lake, Mussorgsky) – 6:37
  12. "Nutrocker" (Tchaikovsky, Fowley
    Kim Fowley

    Kim Vincent Fowley is an United States record producer, impresario, songwriter and musician. He is the son of Hollywood character actor Douglas Fowley ....
    ) – 4:26

Bonus tracks

  1. "Pictures at an Exhibition" [studio version*] – 15:28
    1. "Promenade"
    2. "The Gnome"
    3. "Promenade"
    4. "The Sage"
    5. "The Hut of Baba Yaga"
    6. "The Great Gate of Kiev"


* This track, recorded in 1993, is available on the 2001 remastered edition. It was also released on The Return of the Manticore
The Return of the Manticore

The Return of the Manticore is a 4-disc retrospective on the band Emerson, Lake and Palmer's career. It was released in 1993 and features several new recordings of previously released songs, most notably a studio recording of "Pictures at an Exhibition," presented in Dolby Surround Sound....
 box set and some pressings of the 1994 album In the Hot Seat
In the Hot Seat

In The Hot Seat is an album by progressive rock band Emerson, Lake & Palmer, released in 1994 . Keith Emerson had nerve problems in his right hand, which made it almost impossible to play the keyboards....
.

Personnel

  • Keith Emerson
    Keith Emerson

    Keith Noel Emerson is a British keyboard player and composer. Formerly a member of the Keith Emerson Trio, John Brown's Bodies, The T-Bones, V.I.P.s, P.P....
     - Pipe Organ
    Pipe organ

    The pipe organ is a keyboard musical instrument that produces sound by venting mechanically compressed air through resonant Organ pipe. Each pipe produces sound at one fixed pitch, so they are provided in sets or "ranks" with one pipe or more per note, each rank having a common timbre and loudness throughout....
    , Hammond
    Hammond organ

    The Hammond organ is an electronic organ which was invented by Laurens Hammond in 1934 and manufactured by the Hammond Organ Company. While the Hammond organ was originally sold to Church as a lower-cost alternative to the wind-driven pipe organ, in the 1960s and 1970s, it became a standard keyboard instrument for jazz, blues, Rock and r...
     C3 and L100 Organs, Moog Modular Synthesizer
    Moog synthesizer

    Moog synthesizer may refer to any number of analog synthesizers designed by Dr. Robert Moog or manufactured by Moog Music, and is commonly used as a generic term for analog and digital music synthesisers....
    , Ribbon controller
    Ribbon controller

    A ribbon controller is a user interface used to control parameters of electronic musical instruments, primarily used with analogue synthesizers....
    , Clavinet
    Clavinet

    Not to be confused with clarinetA Clavinet is an electrophone keyboard instrument manufactured by the Hohner company. It is essentially an electronically amplified clavichord, analogous to an electric guitar....
  • Greg Lake
    Greg Lake

    Greg Lake is an England bass guitarist, guitarist, vocalist, songwriter and record producer, best known as a founding member of King Crimson and Emerson, Lake & Palmer....
     - bass
    Bass guitar

    The electric bass guitar is a stringed instrument played primarily with the fingers or thumb , or by using a plectrum.The bass guitar is similar in appearance and construction to an electric guitar, but with a larger body, a longer neck and Scale length, and usually four strings tuned to the same pitches as those of the double bass, whic...
    , acoustic guitar
    Acoustic guitar

    An acoustic guitar is a guitar that uses only acoustic methods to project the sound produced by its strings. The term is a retronym, coined after the advent of electric guitars, which depend on electronic amplification to make their sound audible....
    , Vocals
    Singing

    Singing is the act of producing musical sounds with the human voice, which is often contrasted with regular speech. A person who sings is called a singer or vocalist....
  • Carl Palmer
    Carl Palmer

    Carl Palmer is an England drummer and percussionist. He is credited as one of the most respected Rock drummers to emerge from the 1960s. In addition, Palmer is a veteran of a number of famous England bands, including the Crazy World of Arthur Brown , Atomic Rooster, Emerson, Lake & Palmer, and Asia ....
     - percussion
    Percussion instrument

    A percussion instrument is any object which produces a sound by being hit with an implement, shaken, rubbed, scraped, or by any other action which sets the object into vibration....
    , drums
    Drum kit

    A drum kit is a collection of drums, cymbals and sometimes other percussion instruments, such as cowbell s, wood blocks, triangles, chimes, or tambourines, arranged for convenient playing by a single drummer....


Production

  • Producer: Greg Lake
  • Engineer: Eddie Offord
    Eddie Offord

    Eddy Offord is a noted record producer and Audio engineering, who worked on some of the most famous progressive rock albums of the 1970s, often at London's Advision Studios....
  • Remastering: Joseph M. Palmaccio
    Joseph M. Palmaccio

    Joseph M. Palmaccio is an American mastering engineer born in rural South Carolina.Palmaccio has been nominated for four Grammy Awards and has won 3 in the Best Historical Album category for mastering....
  • Arrangers: Keith Emerson, Greg Lake
  • Cover design: William Neal
  • Cover painting: William Neal
  • Artwork: William Neal
  • Photography: Nigel Marlow, Keith Morris
  • Lyrics: Greg Lake, Richard Fraser
    Richard Fraser

    Richard Fraser was a roadie and lyricist for the United Kingdom progressive rock band Emerson, Lake & Palmer .He is notable for receiving credit for their 1970 Emerson, Lake and Palmer 's third track, the hit "Knife Edge" and for his lyrical contributions to Pictures at an Exhibition ....


Charts

Album - Billboard (North America)

Miscellaneous

Mussorgsky's Pictures at an Exhibition was also performed in a different electronic arrangement by Isao Tomita
Isao Tomita

, is a renowned Japanese electronic music composer....
 and in a heavy metal adaptation by the German band Mekong Delta
Mekong Delta (band)

Mekong Delta is a German progressive metal/thrash metal band, formed in 1985....
. These both are more complete versions of the original suite.

Singles

  • Nutrocker / The Great Gates of Kiev