40TH ANNIVERSARY REUNION CONCERT (HIGH VOLTAGE FESTIVAL 2010)

In 1998 ELP split again as a band after a tour. By 2010 Keith Emerson and Greg Lake were playing some concerts as a duo. Later in the same year, with the 40th Anniversary of the formation of the band, ELP reformed the band for a one-off concert. This concert was recorded for CD and video and was released in 2011.

I read some reviews about this concert in 2010. Some people didn't like it. Finally, I recently watched to the DVD of this concert.

For this concert, the band rehearsed for 5 weeks, as Carl Palmer said in interviews. There wasn't a full 40th Anniversary Tour because he didn't like their playing very much. So maybe this is the final concert from ELP as a band.

Greg Lake sings very well despite the passing of time, in a lower register. But he didn't play any lead electric guitar parts in some songs on which he played them years before, only playing the bass guitar. It seems to me that Keith Emerson "simplified" some of his keyboard parts, playing them with different arrangements. He even used his Modular Synthesiser in some parts. Maybe Carl Palmer was the member of the band who played better, maybe due to the fact that he has not stopped playing on tours, doing them with ASIA and with his own band. Most songs are played with different arrangements. And not very well, in my opinion. Being a one-off concert, maybe they were a bit "nervous" and maybe they should have done a short tour to give them the chance to improve their playing and to have more confidence playing on stage, and maybe they should have recorded the last concert to release it on CD and on DVD. But with only one-off concert, they sound a bit "raw". It looks to me more like an "informal" concert, short in lenght, only played to celebrate the 40th Anniversary of the formation of the band.

It's not a very good concert, but they still are very good musicians.