Last Updated on 25 February 2026 by Massimo M.
h1>Pictures at an exhibition is the third album by Emerson, Lake & Palmer and it is their first live album
In 1971 Emerson, Lake & Palmer had two albums to their credit, the first homonymous and the second titled Tarkus, which, combined with their memorable live performances, had already delivered them to the Olympus of progressive rock.
According to many critics, however, the best work of their production is Picture at an exhibition, a live album recorded at Newcastle City Hall on March 26 1971.
This album, which was originally supposed to be a Christmas attachment to the New Musical Express magazine, is the rock remake of the piano work of the same name Mussorgskij to whose original scores by the famous musician, Emerson, Lake & Palmer alternate their compositions. The amalgam is so well done that it is difficult to understand exactly where the original work ends and where EL&P’s begins.
Pictures at an exhibition, published by Island records with catalog number Help 1,
records the final part of the show which is a sort of extension of the repertoire which up to that point had been represented by the material from the first two albums.
For the first time a rock group tackled in such a broad way a project of reworking a classical composition.
Previous experiments by Nice, who had handled Bach, Sibelius, Rachmaninov and Bach, had perhaps been more innovative, but had not undertaken such a monumental undertaking.
It is an indispensable album for progressive fans and, in any case, one of the most significant in the entire history of rock.
In 1977 the Emerson, Lake & Palmer, accompanied by the orchestra conducted by Godfrey Salmon, performed a shortened version of Pictures at an Exhibition , released in 1979 on the live In Concert.
In 1993 the band recorded, for the first and only time, a studio version together with other remakes of old songs, specifically for the anthology box set The Return of the Manticore and then included as an extra track also in the last studio album: In the Hot Seat released in 1994.
From 2001 onwards, it appeared on all remastered editions of the Pictures at an Exhibition album.
Tracklist of pictures at an exibition
Side A
1. Promenade (Musorgskij)
2. The Gnome (Musorgskij/Palmer)
3. Promenade reprise (Mussorgskij/Lake)
4. The Sage (Lake)
5. The Old Castle (Musorgskij/Emerson)
6. Blues Variations (Emerson Lake and Palmer)
Side B (18.47)
1. Promenade reprise 2 (Musorgskij)
2. The Hut of Baba Yaga part one (Musorgskij)
3. The Curse of Baba Yaga (Emerson Lake and Palmer)
4. The Hut of Baba Yaga part two (Musorgskij)
5. The Great Gates of Kiev (Mussorgskij/Lake)
6. Nutrocker (Kim Fowley)
See the Emerson, Lake and Palmer discography
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