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Renaissance - Live at the Royal Albert Hall with the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra Part 1 CD (album) cover

LIVE AT THE ROYAL ALBERT HALL WITH THE ROYAL PHILHARMONIC ORCHESTRA PART 1

Renaissance

 

Symphonic Prog

3.83 | 64 ratings

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Warthur
Prog Reviewer
4 stars Buyer beware: for some unaccountable reason, the good folks at the King Biscuit Flower Hour decided that rather than putting the Royal Albert Hall show out as a 2CD package (outside of a release in Japan where they did just that), they'd split it into two distinct releases, with the latter one completely pointlessly padded out with extra material. (Namely, a performance of Prologue from a 1979 concert - redundant because an all-orchestral version of Prologue begins the proceedings in the Royal Albert Hall concert itself - and a 10 minute studio track from 1983, You, from when the band was close to running out of steam entirely and needing to go into hibernation.)

It should also be noted that Esoteric, as part of their excellent series of Renaissance reissues, has included the whole Royal Albert Show as bonus discs on their release of Novella. As such, there is little need to get the separate release of the show if you have that or are planning to get it.

So, with that point understood, how is it? Well, essentially it's Renaissance working with a top-tier orchestra, so you know it's going to be good - with much of their material already optimised for performance with an orchestra anyway, they can get out there and do what they do best and trust the Royal Philharmonic to back them up to perfection. Unfortunately, the recording quality is not what it could be, with some sections having a sort of fuzzy sound quality to them, and at points there's a background hum which doesn't seem to have been tackled. In essence, it's a five-star performance let down by three-star technology - call it four stars as a compromise.

The first half of the concert consists of a fully orchestral rendition of Prologue - which as a result sounds refreshingly different from its band performances on most live releases - and then three epics (Can You Understand, Can You Hear Me?, and Song of Scheherazade) sandwiching the short breather Carpet of the Sun. The main standout here is how well Can You Hear Me? sits alongside the other Renaissance epics which had become well-worn parts of their repertoire. The performance of Scheherazade is good, though its quieter sections are especially badly affected by that nagging background hum.

Warthur | 4/5 |

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