I agree. He's British as well so a real oversight.

I fully agree. This piece deserves to be played by renowned pianists and orchestras and should be broadcast on radio every now and then.

However, there was this interpretation three years ago: kzfaq.info/get/bejne/h6t-f8Z3utmWh6c.html

There is no better way to express the discrepancy of a forgotten masterpiece

Their version of Jerusalem is completely unironic and as British as one could ask, yet the BBC banned it. Even the Pythons got away with mocking this hymn, but not ELP.

not anyone's, yours. There are plenty of flaws, copy cat, and college level writing... and playing. Yes, I love Keith, but have to be real. Also, He had lots of help orchestrating it.

I've tried to get them and Radio 3 to play it for years without any success. I believe it was played once by the BBC in the late 70's. I am not sure if this is prejudice over the fact that it was composed by a rock musician and so not seen as highbrow enough for a ‘serious’ radio station or because he committed suicide? We hear Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue or John Adams’ Short Ride in a Fast Machine ad nauseum and the Piano Concerto compares very favourably with these. The pianist Jeffrey Biegel who has performed the piece in concert said.“The first time I performed his concerto was with a conductor friend of mine, David Gilbert. He had a community orchestra in New Jersey, the Bergen Philharmonic Orchestra. ‘If you say it’s good, let’s do it.’ The piece had legs. I started pairing it with Leroy Anderson’s Piano Concerto, Gershwin’s Rhapsody In Blue, and Chopin’s Andante Spianato et Grande Polonaise.”

Also Bach, Bartók and English hymns!

This is what makes music so wonderful! Musicians inspiring musicians! John Williams obviously listened and admired many artists.

Same with me. Had it on LP - still ought to have it - but didn't listen to it for years, in fact decades. Now today I remembered it and looked for it on KZfaq. And here it is, and I'm listening to it, happy. Now that I'm knowing more about music, it seems to me partly like Francis Poulenc (very strong), sometimes like Bernstein and Andrew Lloyd Webber (3rd movement). They all have grown famous, Keith Emerson hasn't. Don't understand, why. Wrong audience? Pop fans not liking piano concerts? Classic listeners not knowing him (and Lake and Palmer)? May be. Anyway, some people know and love this concerto and will ever listen to it! Thank you so much!

I still have it on vinyl too. And I even have the turntable I got in 1983, but I haven't hooked it up despite having moved god knows how many times. No idea whether it even works or not and I broke the tabs off the dust cover in the mid-90s and was never able to find a replacement. How sad is that?

If you want to be known as a “great composer”, the least thing you can do is orchestrate your own piano concerto yourself. You need to get out more.

@@herbertwells8757 This is one of the worst comments I've ever read, not just because of the opinion, but I'll give some background as to why I think that: Yes, it's your opinion - althought it reads as if you're trying to lecture people, and even Keith himself, on what one should do to be a great composer - many composers' had their piano concerti among their greatest, most established and well known works - composers such as Rachmaninoff, Brahms, Mendelssohn, Chopin, Scriabin, Prokofiev, Bartok, Ligeti and many others. These works were also where they showed the heights of their compositional techniques. Of course they had other works, but you word your comment as if composing a piano concerto is somewhat easier and lazier than composing for a formation that doesn't have your main instrument in it, which is as wrong as one can be. By the way, the reason why Keith Emerson is not highly known among composers is because the majority of his work was done under the guise of "rock" music, mainly because of the instrumentation and the image ELP had, but when you listen to Tarkus or Karn Evil 9, you'll see that it's way way closer to Ginastera, Bartok (and to what late Ligeti would do decades after) and jazz than to, say, Led Zeppelin or Aerosmith. This coupled with the fact that, in one side, some current rock lovers might find the music too dense and complex and on the other side, some classical/contemporary music lovers will instantly dismiss it because they think they are above such genres. This makes Keith's music a strange animal, even though his place in history is already established, just not widely recognized, because when you study his craft of form and development, his harmonies, the timbres, his rhythmic inovations and his counterpoint, the music he was doing in the early 70s was on par with the type of writing that would arise in contemporary chamber and concert music in the 80s. This concert here is even somewhat aesthetically tamed when compared to his other stuff. Also, not trying to put the weight of what happened on you, but comments such as yours are just like the types of online comments that utimately made Keith Emerson commit suicide. That is, prescriptive comments that try to disguise a somewhat hateful and unbased opinion as an objective fact, as if you are above it all and the bearer of all truth. Just something for you to think about.

@@MomentsNotice Oh Please, ... what he said is true. And that is all he said. You didn't even address that AT ALL. You went on a rant. That was some of the most high and mighty, poorly spelled preaching I've seen as a professional musician. You are so damn funny,. "to dense and complex," you arrogant p+ick. Laughable. Fans are horrible. Fans made keith do it. You are that type of rabid fan he was worried about. I talked to him for over an hour on that subject decades earlier.

There's no need to put down someone else's music to praise Emerson.

If you played this to a musical 'expert' without telling then who or what it was, they would wax lyrical back to you.

jajajajajajaj

Bullshit.

Much of it seems to move from one idea to another constantly, which is like me.

That's a powerful statement.

depends on how deep you analyze it. I am a rock musician who listened to this piece thousands of times. AND LOVED IT~! And because of it and Keith and some other prog greats, learned to really love and play classical music, as well as rock on Keys and many other things. I think they could make a case pretty easilly on the composition side, And where keith was a good rock player, there are so many classical cats the crush his skills from that perspective. But no, they don't play upside down or tip hammonds over on themselves and play...

I think you mean “had had”. What would this have demonstrated to your “advanced students” that a piano concerto by a reputable twentieth-century composer could not have?

@@herbertwells8757 prohead are like that.. they say Emerson was the greatest ever jeje

@@herbertwells8757 Emerson is as reputable as any other composer. He was sadly snubbed by the establishment. Get out of your ivory tower.

I disagree,.. but not from a classical point of view. He is writing classical music here, but in the tradition of the Prog genre he was part of. Prog hodgepodges by definition - and this is a fantastic composition and hangs together in the language of it’s context.

I gave you my perspective as a classical composer. Both of us may be correct because we are coming from two different places.@@jimjosemusic5325

It’s dross.

También suena mucho a Germaine Tailleferre

Das ist schon typisch Emerson.

There is also a bit of Stravinsky IMHO

throw in a little Bernstein alongside the Gershwin. Also reference to baroque period at around minute 5. was thinking the same thing you wrote.

Many touches of Darius Milhaud.

I think there's many more influences than that.

There is rachmaninoff and prokofiev influence heard

The video of ELP at Olympic Stadium Montreal in 1977 (with orchestra) features the Third Movement (including Carl Palmer on percussion)

@@daphnelawless9194 There's also Jeffrey Biegel doing it, with Keith in attendance on You Tube.

Where did you buy it? I want it!

@@conductorespinal Theodore Presser Music in NY, NY

I had this in book form as a 15 year old. I'd stare at it and listen in awe before I even knew how to read it.

or firebird?

He didn't. He was helped by the Philharmonic's conductor. Fact Keith had no formal training. Some local piano teachers when he was young. But learned to sight read and, obviously, write

@@AA-dk3er Issuu... how do get access to this? thanks

@@sylvainjazz unfortunately, downloads are (no longer?) allowed. How did you get it on here? Thanks.

hi, if you mean if the book is on for example on amazon i think not. the cd instead is emerson lake and palmer works vol 1 black cover

the album contains another fantastic track to look for, Pirates

Seems to me he did start a 2nd and it was lost in a fire at a cottage he rented. I assume he redid what was lost but never finished it maybe?

@@flyurway well I guess losing it in a cottage fire is better than "my dog ate it".

@@markanderson3870 Lol! Now that I think about it, it may have been this one that burned in the fire and got redone.

@@AA-dk3er He apparently did have plans for one from at least 1999-2001 but nothing appeared and I guess no sketches survived. I suppose calling the first one No1 suggested he had ambitions for more even in the 70s.