Concerto For Group And Orchestraby Deep Purple

Mixing (neo)classical with hard rock might not be Deep Purple's genuine idea, but they certainly are the ones that materialized the experiment in the most famous way. Making cultures collide was definitely the biggest achievement of the Concerto for Group and Orchestra composed by Jon Lord, Deep Purple's keyboard player. With his classical music education, Lord delivered a piece built upon a basic orchestral theme, interpolating mostly improvised hard rock episodes, such as Ritchie Blacjmore's fantastic solo despite his obvious boredom with the whole attempt. At the time, the Concerto was received with mixed appreciations from both worlds (classical and pop enthusiasts), as well as by the band itself. The deal was to deliver two live performances of the Concerto, and then move forward to something that Blackmore and Ian Gillan (the brand new singer) expected as much more exciting: hard rock to the bone. Nonetheless, the Concerto remains today as a quite enjoyable artistic work, foreshadowing future encounter with various orchestra's in the band's career...