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Renaissance - Live at Carnegie Hall CD (album) cover

LIVE AT CARNEGIE HALL

Renaissance

 

Symphonic Prog

4.34 | 270 ratings

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Eetu Pellonpaa
Special Collaborator
Honorary Collaborator
5 stars I'm very fond of live albums, but often symphonic prog bands have done a bit duller live recordings, as carefully composed structured songs are often played on stage copying each note from the studio versions. This rule applies also to this album in some extent, but there are some slight re-arrangements, and some numbers have also space for free playing. There's also New York Philharmonic Orchestra backing up the band on some of the tunes. It's interesting to hear the reactions of the crowd, how the enthusiastic applauses and shrieks rise are quickly mute as they emerge during the short pauses of the music.

The song selection is very good, "Prologue" acts as a logical opening number choice, and "Ocean Gypsy", the very pretty minor key folk ballad is my favorite of this kind of numbers from RENAISSANCE. "Carpet of The Sun" is not a very essential pick in my opinion, but surely Annie has a right to perform one of her favorite songs. "Mother Russia" is also a very beautiful song, showing the clear influences of Russian classical music to their melodies. The second disc has two long epics, "Scheherazade" and "Ashes are Burning". The extra length for the first one mentioned comes actually from the narration of the story line, so the song structure is similar to the version on the studio album. "Ashes are Burning" is then an exceptional performance, the instrumental passages grow as long jams, and there's even a long bass solo here. What is incredible compared to the studio version here, is the decent composed finale of the song. On the 1973 album version the song ends in a very irritating fadeout.

As a conclusion, if you want to have just one album from this band, then I'll recommend you to get this!

Eetu Pellonpaa | 5/5 |

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