| Track by Track Review
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Disc: 1
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Festive Overture - Shostakovich
A classical fanfare starts things. That builds out with a full symphonic treatment. It peaks and then gives way to a more playful classical arrangement. This nearly seven-minute opening piece is all orchestra and no rock band. |
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Fifties Child
This also starts symphonic, but it turns into a rock band arrangement with orchestral augmentation. |
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Galadriel
A more balladic approach brings this in. The symphonic elements are powerful and rich. They lend magic to the proceedings. This is beautiful. |
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In My Life
I dig this driving melodic rocking tune. The orchestral elements are less involved on this. It's a great prog rocker. |
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Poor Man's Moody Blues
Yes, this does feel a lot like "Nights in White Satin." This ballad is great, and the symphonic elements bring drama and style to it. |
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North
I love the balance between mellower and more rocking modes on this track. This is more of a purely rock band based arrangement. The guitar soloing is melodic and tasty. This is just such a strong tune. I really love the bass work on the mellower, almost fusion-like jam mid-track. |
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Summer Soldier
This is another dynamic and powerful progressive rock number. There is definitely an epic scope to it. The track has a great balance between the more rocking and mellower modes. The orchestra lends a lot to the closing section of this piece. |
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The Poet
Coming in purely symphonic, the vocals come in over the top of that backdrop as this balladic arrangements gets underway. |
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After the Day
Another mellower track for most of it's run, this has a lot of symphonic elements built into it. It turns more rocking with some killer electric guitar soloing later, and the orchestral instruments really intensify it. |
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Disc: 2
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Hornpipe - Handel's Water Music
This half of the performance starts as the first half did, with a purely symphonic piece. |
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Moonwater
Female vocals over symphonic instrumentation is the concept as this gets underway. This piece remains sans rock band. |
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Mocking Bird
While this starts symphonic, and those elements remain throughout, we get balladic progressive rock for the first time on this second disc here. This is an effective piece of music that works well. It gets powered up as it continues, but also drops back to another section of pure symphonic music. They even bring some hints of jazz in at times. |
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Loving Is Easy
The rhythm section starts this and synthesizer comes over the top. The track drives out from there with some smoking hot prog jamming. Symphonic instrumentation adds some icing on the cake. This is such a powerful piece of music. It is definitely a rocker. I really love the expressive guitar soloing. The orchestra really adds a lot to this, too. |
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She Said
There is a great balance between mellower, world music based sounds and the more rocking ones. The more balladic parts are more fully symphonic. This is really an epic styled piece with a lot of various movements at play. |
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Poor Wages
Keyboards start this, and it works out to rocking zones from there. I really love the guitar work on this thing, but the whole track is pretty amazing. |
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Medicine Man
This driving rocker gains quite a bit from the orchestral presence. It's a prog powerhouse with a lot of style and charm. That orchestra element really brings a lot of emphasis and intensity later. |
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Dark Now My Sky
At over 12-minutes of music, this is the epic of the set. A symphonic element has a spoken poetry reading over the top as it gets going. After the reading peaks, we get a full orchestral build-up. Electric guitar eventually dances over that backdrop as it gets more rocking. Killer drumming is heard, as well. Eventually keyboards and bass create the backdrop for the first sung vocals of the track by themselves. After that vocals section it powers out to some killer symphonic prog and the cut alternates between those two modes for a time. It gets back to pure symphony orchestra music further down the road. |
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On Leave
Another of epic scope and scale, this has a great mix of sounds and modes. It does land more on the mellow end of the spectrum. It's all class. It gets very powerful and more rocking before it's over. That section is so powerful. |
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Hymn
This proggy song starts as a balladic piece and gradually works out to more soaring territory as it continues. I suppose it qualifies as a power ballad, but of the prog variety. The orchestral elements really add a lot of power and magic to this track. |
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